Alex Niven

A brilliant study of Oasis' debut album, highlighting the band's massive cultural impact and the raw, positive power of those early songs.

Oasis' Definitely Maybe

An in-depth exploration of the importance of the North of England in the modern era. The North Will Rise Again covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants, the expansiveness and optimism that defines Northern culture, and the recurrent sense of failure and despair that is at the heart of one of the West's most impoverished regions. By telling the story of the North in the last few decades, Alex goes in search of answers to some of the big questions at the forefront of British politics and society today, touching on live issues including the North/South divide, austerity, the impact of Brexit, the collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall', and calls for regional devolution. He concludes with a powerful argument for a revival of northern politics and society by way of what he calls 'radical regionalism'. A native Northerner himself, having returned to his home city of Newcastle with his family in the last few years, Alex also includes elements of memoir and stories from his own family history to reflect some of the key arguments of his book. To what extent are the crises of the last ten years partly the result of fundamental divides and inequalities in the geography of England? How did the North become a place of lost potential and broken dreams? And what can be done to make it one of the most dynamic and forward-looking places in the world once again? Niven considers all these questions and more in this lively and highly topical book.

In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands

The North Will Rise Again

An edition of the letters of the poet Basil Bunting (1900-1985). This is a long-awaited first selected edition of the letters of Basil Bunting, one of the major modernist poets of the twentieth century. It includes a large portion of Bunting's correspondence (around 200 letters) to recipients including Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Harriet Monroe, William Carlos Williams, Louis Zukofsky, Ted Hughes, George Oppen, Allen Ginsberg, Donald Davie, and Tom Pickard. Following Bunting from his first encounters with major literary figures in London and Paris in the 1920s to his death in Northumberland in 1985, this selection showcases a narrative that is crucial to the history of modernism and modern poetry in English. Highlights include a long and detailed dialogue with Ezra Pound in the 1930s on political, economic, and literary subjects, a rich, ruminative exchange with the American poet Louis Zukoksfy lasting over four decades, and various accounts of the excitements and controversies of the Anglo-American poetry scene of the 60s and 70s. Whether Bunting is writing from New York at the height of the Depression, Iran in the aftermath of World War II, or the north of England during preparation of his masterpiece Briggflatts (1966), his prose is unfailingly sharp, eloquent, entertaining, and caustic. This edition contains detailed annotations of Bunting's letters, a critical introduction, glossary of names, and an editorial commentary.

Letters of Basil Bunting

Tariq Goddard

"I donÕt have any heroes, theyÕre all useless", opined John Lydon in 1976. As a spokesperson of sorts for the punk generation, Lydon was giving voice to a nihilistic, deconstructive impulse which, for better or worse, would go on to dominate the next half-century or so of intellectual, cultural and political life. But isnÕt one of the problems with the modern world that we no longer have any real sense of what heroism is? What if we recovered heroism from the hands of the fascists and the neoliberal ideologues, and proclaimed that Ð despite everything Ð a hero can and should be something to be? In these personal, provocative essays, the authors behind the uncompromising project that is Repeater Books come together to redefine the idea of the hero for a twenty-first-century public which desperately needs something to believe in. From Eric Cantona to Wile E Coyote, Bruno Latour to Paula Rego, forgotten legends and anonymous family members, this compendium of extraordinary human behaviour is essential reading for anyone who has ever thought that, despite what Jean-Paul Sartre said, heaven is other people.

Repeater Book of Heroism

For David Cameron and ‘Big Society’ Tories, folk culture means organic food, nu-folk pop music, and pastoral myths of Englishness. Meanwhile, postmodern liberal culture teaches us that talking about a singular ‘folk’ is reductive at best, neo-fascist at worst. But what is being held in check by this consensus against the possibility of a unified, oppositional, populist identity taking root in modern Britain? Folk Opposition explores a renewed contemporary divide between rulers and ruled, between a powerful elite and a disempowered populace. Using a series of examples, from folk music to football supporters’ trusts, from Raoul Moat to Ridley Scott, it argues that anti-establishment populism remains a powerful force in British culture, asserting that the left must recapture this cultural territory from the far right and begin to rebuild democratic representation from the bottom up.

Folk Opposition

Alec Marsh

Peter Nicholls

Richard Parker

Mark Steven

Alexander Howard

Roxana Preda

Michael Kindellan

Alex Pestell

Mark Byron

James Dowthwaite

Archie Henderson

Sean Pryor

Miranda Hickman

Kristin Grogan

GLOSSATOR 10 (2018) Astern in the Dinghy: Commentaries on Ezra’s Pound’s Thrones de los Cantares 96-109 Edited by Alexander Howard You in the dinghy (piccioletta) astern there! (CIX/788) Mr. Pound Goes to Washington Alexander Howard (University of Sydney) Some Contexts for Canto XCVI Richard Parker (University of Surrey) Gold and/or Humaneness: Pound’s Vision of Civilization in Canto XCVII Roxana Preda (University of Edinburgh) Hilarious Commentary: Ezra Pound’s Canto XCVIII Peter Nicholls (New York University) “Tinkle, tinkle, two tongues”: Sound, Sign, Canto XCIX Michael Kindellan (University of Sheffield) “In the intellect possible”: Revisionism and Aesopian Language in Canto C Alex Pestell (Independent Scholar) Deep Rustication in Canto CI Mark Byron (University of Sydney) Shipwrecks and Mountaintops: Notes on Canto CII Mark Steven (University of Exeter) Revised Intentions: James Buchanan and the Antebellum White House in Canto CIII James Dowthwaite (University of Göttingen) Exploring Permanent Values: Canto CIV Archie Henderson (Independent Scholar) Canto CV: A Divagation? Alec Marsh (Muhlenberg College) So Slow: Canto CVI Sean Pryor (University of New South Wales) ‘The clearest mind ever in England’: Pound’s Late Paradisal in Canto CVII Miranda Hickman (McGill University) Three Ways of Looking at a Canto: Navigating Canto CVIII Kristin Grogan (Exeter College, University of Oxford) ‘To the king onely to put value’: Monarchy and Commons in Pound’s Canto CIX Alex Niven (University of Newcastle)

Glossator 10: Thrones

Astern in the Dinghy: Commentaries on Ezra’s Pound’s Thrones de los Cantares XCVI—CIX

A study of place, identity, music, politics and regionalism which calls for a radical restructuring of the British Isles. In the early twenty-first century, "Englishness" suddenly became a hot topic. A rash of art exhibitions, pop albums and coffee table books arrived on the scene, all desperate to recover England’s lost national soul. But when we sweep away the patriotic stereotypes, we begin to see that England is a country that does not — and perhaps should not — exist in any essential sense. In this provocative text combining polemic and memoir, Alex Niven argues that the map of the British Isles should be torn apart completely as we look towards a time of radical political reform. Rejecting outdated nationalisms, Niven argues for a renovated model of culture and governance for the islands — a fluid, dynamic version of regionalism preparing the way for a new "dream archipelago".

Alex Niven

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