Jay Daniel Wright

The gritty story of working-class lads in Bradford, at the heart of Northern Monkeys is The Ointment — a football firm built on pride and reputation. But behind the matchday clashes are deeper struggles: addiction, poverty, broken homes, love, revenge, and the fight to stay above water. As the firm rises, the police close in, determined to bring them down.Some lads are just trying to escape their mundane lives. Others are chasing power and a reputation. And some just want a few beers, a laugh with their mates, and a bit of casual violence.But what happens on the streets is only half the story.Northern Monkeys goes beyond the terraces — deep into the lives, relationships and choices that shape these men when the crowds are gone, and the doors are shut.A brutal, honest look at life on the edge, when the lines between good and bad start to blur — and then start to cross.

For over half a century, Jay Wright's poetry has been celebrated for its alertness to the multiplicity of human experience and identity. Wright's inexorable lyric voice, whose gravitational pull has an 'indelible music', transforms life into myth, body into spirit, image into icon, and ritual into collective consciousness. Revelling in the rich interplay between Native American, African American, Latin American, European and West African cultural forms, Wright detangles the threads of these complex historical forces to present a tapestry of the Atlantic World and the people who move within it. Published for the first time in the UK, Transfigurations is the definitive volume that includes all of Wright's 20th century poetry works - The Homecoming Singer (1971), Soothsayers and Omens (1976), Explications/Interpretations (1984), Dimensions of History (1976), The Double Invention of Komo (1980), Elaine's Book (1988), Boleros (1991), Transformations (1997). Transfigurations is a singular opportunity for readers to fully immerse themselves in the sublime imagination of one of the most profound, generous and innovative American poets of all time.

This irreverent introduction to art gives children the confidence to respond to art on their own terms, and - most importantly - to have fun with it. Under the playful guidance of Leo, the museum cat, readers encounter abstract, Surrealist, nude and contemporary art, ancient sculpture, still lifes and portraits. But instead of being told facts to memorize, they're equipped with the knowledge that allows them to come up with their own interpretations of famous art works. Knowing how symbols work, they'll decipher clues in Frida Kahlo's self-portrait; understanding Surrealism, they'll decide for themselves what Joan Miro's abstract doodles are all about. This book shows that art isn't about knowing the right answers - it's about having fun, making up your own mind and seeing things from a different angle.