Don Paterson

'The Arctic' in Don Paterson's powerful new collection is the name of a bar frequented by the survivors of several kinds of apocalypse. The poems gathered here are as various as the clientele: elegies for the poet's musician father; tales of the love lives of gods and the childhoods of psychopaths; troubled encounters between men and women; odes to movies and the male anatomy; studies of art and ambition, politics and parenthood. Other voices enter the fray in renderings of Cavafy, Montale and the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. And in the fourth part of Paterson's ongoing poem 'The Alexandrian Library', the poet-as-amateur scientist - from a weather station at the top of Ben Nevis to the cellar of The Arctic - bears witness to the imminence of man-made extinction. By turns urgent, railing and tender, these are poems of and for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous writers.

Don Paterson's latest collection of poetry starts from the premise that the crisis of mid-life may be a permanent state of mind. Zonal is an experiment in science-fictional and fantastic autobiography, with all of its poems taking their imaginative cue from the first season of The Twilight Zone (1959-1960), playing fast and loose with both their source material and their author's own life. Narrative and dramatic in approach, genre-hopping from horror to Black Mirror-style sci-fi, 'weird tale' to metaphysical fantasy, these poems change voices constantly in an attempt to get at the truth by alternate means. Occupying the shadowlands between confession and invention, Zonal takes us to places and spaces that feel endlessly surprising, uncanny and limitless.

The Poem attempts to answer several questions: what is a poem? In what way is its use of language distinct? What conditions allow it to arise, and what is its cultural purpose? And how, exactly, do poems work? Part polemic, part technical treatise and part meditation, The Poem is an ambitious contemporary ars poetica. Paterson looks at the writing, transmission and reading of poetry with wit and scholarly flair, drawing together literary analysis, linguistics, metaphysics, psychology and cognitive science in a thorough exploration of how and why poems are composed. The Poem takes the form of three long essays. 'Lyric' attends to the music and sound patterns of poetry, and the way in which they work to deepen poetic sense; 'Sign' develops a new theory of metaphor, metonym and symbol, and looks at how ideas of 'meaning' change under poetic conditions; 'Metre' addresses poetry's relationship to time and to the rhythms of speech, then builds a theory of prosody from the ground up, proposing some radical correctives to existing metrical theory along the way. Through his various professional guises - as major prize-winning poet, as Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews and as Poetry Editor at Picador Macmillan - few are better placed to grant this insider's perspective. For all those intrigued by the inner workings of the art form and its fundamental secrets, The Poem will challenge, intrigue and surprise.

Aphorisms have been described as 'the obscure hinterland between poetry and prose' (New Yorker) - short pithy statements that capture the essence of the human condition in all its shades. In this New and Selected, master of the form Don Paterson brings the best examples from his two previous volumes together with ingenious new material relevant to today's world. Moving and mischievous, canny and profound - these wide-ranging observations of no more than one or two lines demonstrate that the aphorism is the perfect form for our times. Consciousness is the turn the universe makes to hasten its own end. * Agnosticism is indulged only by those who have never suffered belief. * Poet: someone in the aphorism business for the money.

Other Ways to Leave the Room features the work of three of the most beloved and lauded poets currently at large. Between them, Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Nick Laird write lyrical, luminous and often darkly witty poems about the rugged wildness of the Scottish landscape; about fatherhood; about whisky-drinking, alcohol abuse and tenement life; about sex, love and the pursuit of the spiritual; about childhood in the Ireland of the Troubles, and about the strange possibilities of the technological future. What all three have in common is an ability to combine observations of gritty real life with a sense of the mythical proportions always lurking just under the surface of the everyday. The Penguin Modern Poets are succinct guides to the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. Every volume brings together representative selections from the work of three poets now writing, allowing the curious reader and the seasoned lover of poetry to encounter the most exciting voices of our moment.

The only book of its kind, Introduction to South Pacific Law provides an overview of law in the South Pacific. It sets out the framework of South Pacific legal systems and also describes the substantive law on a broad range of topics. Examining both state laws and customary law, the book highlights common patterns and explains some of the principal differences between the laws and legal systems of the countries of the region. The introductory chapter looks at the development of South Pacific law and at South Pacific jurisprudence. Individual chapters are devoted to state laws, customary law, constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, family law, contract law, torts law, land law, and court systems. The book makes extensive reference to legislative provisions and case law of individual jurisdictions. Including a discussion of recent changes in the law, this new edition of Introduction to South Pacific Law is a useful and up-to-date resource for all those interested in the law of the region.

Don Paterson (s. 1963) on monipuolinen ja laajasti Euroopassa arvostettu runoilija. Skotlannin Buddhaksi nimetyltä Patersonilta on Anni Sumari tähän valikoimaan koonnut runojen lisäksi aforismeja ja hämmästyttäviksi retorisiksi taidonnäytteiksi nimitettyjä Shakespearen sonettien tulkintoja. Patersonille on myönnetty Whitbread Prize for Poetry, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize ja kahdesti T. S. Eliot Prize. Hän on ollut myös merkittävän, kansainvälisen Neustadt-kirjallisuuspalkinnon ehdokkaana. Aiemmin Patersonilta on suomennettu aforismiteos Varjojen kirja (The Book of Shadows, Sanasato 2010).

'This is the night mail crossing the border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order...' -- W. H. Auden Wordsworth was the first laureate of locomotives: in fact he railed against them, and against the consequent opening up of the Lakes to holiday hordes ('On the Projected Kendal and Windermere Railway'). His dismay was echoed down the decades by disturbed ruralists, and yet the train has become part of our psychic landscape: some of the best-loved English poems - Edward Thomas's 'Adlestrop', or Philip Larkin's 'Whitsun Weddings' - have celebrated carriages, platforms and waiting rooms, while locomotion has inspired some of the most characteristic poetry of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Stevenson, Hardy and MacNeice, Betjeman and Auden (whose 'Night Mail' was written to accompany a 1930s GPO documentary about the postal express from Euston to Glasgow). Co-edited by two of our most distinguished poets, Train Songs offers a round tour - from Wordsworth to Hugo Williams and beyond - starting from the poetry of departures and brief encounters, but taking in the American Blues, the troop trains of two world wars, and the addiction to speed which characterised the European revolutions. Trains have carried the freight of history from the Industrial Revolution onwards - the Armstice in 1918 was signed in a railway carriage, the death camps were organised around train timetables - and this new anthology shows how the train in all its forms has exercised a unique hold upon our collective unconscious.

"Contentious, rude, hilarious, moving, and truthful. A book you'll dip into for the rest of your life." --Ian Rankin The male genitals are worn externally as evolution is in the process of expelling them from the body. Another million years and they'll be stored in a drawer. With Best Thought, Worst Thought, the award-winning Scottish poet Don Paterson has assembled a comic, intelligent, and cranky collection of brief truths and conjectures and, in the process, revitalizes the classic pith of the aphorism. "The form's only virtue is its brevity," Paterson writes; "at least the reader cannot seriously hold that it has wasted their time."

Now in paperback, the highly acclaimed collection by Scottish poet Don Paterson, winner of the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize "Dear son, I was "mezzo del cammin "and the true path was as lost to me as ever" "when you cut in front and lit it as you ran." "See how the true gift never leaves the giver . . ." "" from "Waking with Russell" Hailed for its "seriousness and moral urgency" ("The Independent"), "Landing Light "is one of the most important and resonant poetry collections to come out of Britain in recent years."

A rising star in the United Kingdom, contemporary Scottish poet Paterson is poised to become a major voice of our time. "The London Review of Books" calls him "one of the most talented Scottish writers of the new generation." "The White Lie" is the first and only American selection of Paterson's lyric and urbane poems.