Patience Agbabi

We fight crime across time . . .Leaplings, children born on the 29th of February, are very rare. Rarer still are Leaplings with The Gift - the ability to leap through time. Elle Bíbi-Imbelé Ifíè has The Gift, but she's never used it. Until now. On her twelfth birthday, Elle and her best friend Big Ben travel to the Time Squad Centre in 2048. Elle has received a mysterious warning from the future. Other Leaplings are disappearing in time - and not everyone at the centre can be trusted.Soon Elle's adventure becomes more than a race through time. It's a race against time. She must fight to save the world as she knows it - before it ceases to exist . . .

The Infinite

Ali Smith

Marina Lewycka

Inua Ellams

Abdulrazak Gurnah

Chris Cleave

David Herd

Stephen Collis

Carol Watts

Dragan Todorovic

Jade Amoli-Jackson

Avaes Mohammed

Hubert Moore

Michael Zand

Two unaccompanied children travel across the Mediterranean in an overcrowded boat that has been designed to only make it halfway across… A 63-year-old man is woken one morning by border officers ‘acting on a tip-off’ and, despite having paid taxes for 28 years, is suddenly cast into the detention system with no obvious means of escape… An orphan whose entire life has been spent in slavery – first on a Ghanaian farm, then as a victim of trafficking – writes to the Home Office for help, only to be rewarded with a jail sentence and indefinite detention… These are not fictions. Nor are they testimonies from some distant, brutal past, but the frighteningly common experiences of Europe’s new underclass – its refugees. While those with ‘citizenship’ enjoy basic human rights (like the right not to be detained without charge for more than 14 days), people seeking asylum can be suspended for years in Kafka-esque uncertainty. Here, poets and novelists retell the stories of individuals who have direct experience of Britain’s policy of indefinite immigration detention. Presenting their accounts anonymously, as modern day counterparts to the pilgrims’ stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, this book offers rare, intimate glimpses into otherwise untold suffering.

Refugee Tales

A brilliant reeinterpretation of The Canterbury Tales for the 21st century Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral, Poet pilgrims competing for free picks, Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix From below-the-belt base to the topnotch; I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch when the tales overrun, run offensive, or run clean out of steam, they're authentic and we're keeping it real, reminisce this: Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business. Award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical, and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of our most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.

Telling Tales

It's New Year's Eve and there's trouble on the timeline. Elle is sent on an urgent trip to the 31st of December 1999, the eve of the new millennium, where Millennia's on the rampage. She aims to reinvent herself as a malevolent millennial by taking on Time itself. Can Millennia change the past to destroy the future? It can't be left to chance. It's up to Elle and The Infinites to save the world. And with the very nature of time at stake, they'll have unexpected help from friends in high places. It's the final countdown. And it starts now . . .

The Past Master

Poems and Images about Enslavement to Mark the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act

I Have Found a Song

Bloodshot Monochrome is a glorious poetic take on all things black, white and read. Reinventing the sonnet, Patience Agbabi shines her euphoric, musical lines on everything from growing up to growing old, from Northern Soul to contract killers, from the retro to the brand new. Whether resurrecting the dead in 'Problem Pages', playing out noir dramas in 'Vicious Circle', or capturing moments of her own life in perfect snapshot, Agbabi's verse is sublimely lyrical and spiked with gleeful humour.

Bloodshot Monochrome

It's mid-summer's day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle's friend and fellow Infinite, MCA is arrested for the crime! To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it's too late?

The Time-Thief

It’s mid-summer’s day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle’s friend and fellow Infinite, MC2 is arrested for the crime! To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it’s too late?

Lavinia Greenlaw

Simon Armitage

Frances Leviston

Wendy Cope

Seamus Heaney

Carol Ann Duffy

Sinead Morrissey

Tony Harrison

As part of a unique collaboration between the National Gallery and the Royal Opera House, 14 leading poets were invited to respond to three great masterpieces by the Renaissance painter, Titian.

Poems Inspired by Titian

Metamorphosis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TED HUGHES PRIZE 2015 Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral, Poet pilgrims competing for free picks, Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix From below-the-belt base to the topnotch; I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch when the tales overrun, run offensive, or run clean out of steam, they're authentic and we're keeping it real, reminisce this: Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business. In Telling Tales award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired 21st-Century remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's newest collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of Britain's most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.

Patience Agbabi

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