Adam Thorpe

Adam Thorpe's fourth collection continues his engagement with history: the living continuum that connects us with our near and distant past, nourishing and illuminating our present. Here are traces left of presence: Indian scratchings on rock, the nail-marks of destroyed frescoes, spoken fragments of war memories - petroglyphs that function as both memorials and re-awakenings, traceable with the finger of the imagination. And here, too, are images of the stilled, the stopped life: a snowed-up village, the paralysed victim of motor-neurone disease, a soft drink fermented in an old village cafe. From this rueful equilibrium of mid-life, Thorpe circles his own personal history, allowing regret and anticipation their Janus-like say. These are erudite, generous poems, formally versatile yet rich in startlingly original observation and a natural lyric grace. Performing his unique archaeology on lives lived, Adam Thorpe once again displays the range of his imagination and the depth of his humanity.

In a language deeply soaked in the time and by means of a beguiling story which gradually haunts its own process, Nineteen Twenty-One vividly recreates the year in which The Waste Land was written, as well as offering a bright mirror to the inner and outer complexities of our own troubled times.

Following the success of How Poets Work comes this guide for would-be and published novelists. Ten contributors share their experiences of how to write a novel, where to begin, how to develop plot, character, structure, imagery, and - importantly - where to end. Literary novels, thrillers, cowboy stories, post-modem confections are all discussed, together with the difficulties of getting - and staying - published. The relationship between writer and publisher looms almost as large as that between writer and reader. In addition to advice and tips these often humorous essays also point to the diverse and idiosyncratic world of the novelist, who may write only in hotels, only in a particular room at home, only in longhand, only on a computer, only with a carefully devised plan, only with a character and no idea for a plot. Maura Dooley is a much admired poet and editor, who would like to write a novel. She is a freelance writer and arts administrator in London.

' outwardly the unfilmable script of a would-be English cineste, one Richard Arthur Thornby currently lecturing in Texas on the cinema. He airs a hypothetical movie of both his own American present and his middle-class English families past. . ' John Fowles