Manchester’s Favourite Poetry

To celebrate National Poetry Day, we asked Waterstones, Deansgate for their best selling volumes of poetry. The list contains something old, something new and something blue, and one or two surprises…

Manchester’s favourite poetry books:

1 Citizen – Claudia Rankine (Penguin)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in America after becoming the first book in the prize’s history to be a finalist in both the poetry and criticism categories, Citizen weaves essays, images and poetry together to form a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in an ostensibly ‘post-race’ society.

2 Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt – John Cooper Clarke (Vintage)

Punk. Poet. Pioneer. Dr Cooper Clarke’s seminal collection is as scabrous, wry & vivid now as it was when first published over 25 years ago.

3 The Divine Comedy – Dante, translated by Clive James (Pan Macmillan)

Renowned critic and poet Clive James’ striking and hugely accessible translation that gives us The Divine Comedy as a whole, unified, and dramatic work. Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2013.

4 Sentenced to Life – Clive James (Pan Macmillan)

In his new collection of poems – several of which have already become famous before their book publication – Clive James looks back over an extraordinarily rich life with clear-eyed and unflinching honesty.

5 Hold buy prednisone mastercard Your Own – Kate Tempest (Pan Macmillan)

Ted Hughes Award-winning performance collection is an ambitious, multi-voiced work based around the mythical figure of Tiresias following him through his transformations from child, man and woman to blind prophet.

6 Poetry Please – foreword by Roger McGough (Faber and Faber)

An anthology of the most requested and most listened to poems of all time from the BBC archive.

7 Inferno – Dante, translated by R Kirkpatrick (Penguin)

Considered to be the best modern version of Dante’s epic poem together with the original Italian

8 Brand New Ancients – Kate Tempest (Pan Macmillan)

Winner of the Ted Hughes Prize for innovation in poetry. Tempest’s wholly unique blend of street poetry, rap and storytelling shows how the old myths still live on in our everyday acts of violence, bravery, sacrifice and love – and that our lives make tales no less dramatic and powerful than those of the old gods

9 WB Yeats – edited by Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber)

Ireland’s greatest poet and one of the most influential voices in world literature in the twentieth century.

10 The Waste Land and Other Poems – TS Eliot (Faber and Faber)

The most revolutionary poem of its time, offering a devastating vision of modern civilization between the two World Wars.

Thanks to Waterstones, Deansgate, Manchester

@waterstonesMCR