POETRY

Pessimism For Beginners

2007 Poetry Book Society Winter Choice, and shortlisted for 2007 TS Eliot Prize

Sophie Hannah's fifth book of poems, to be published by Carcanet Press in Autumn 2007

‘She’s extremely good…Very, very fine.’ John Carey, Newsnight Review

A poem from the book:

Something and Nothing

If you had known how little
you would have had to give
to drum into this brittle
hope the desire to live

would you have changed the venue,
your greeting or your tone
or planned things better when you
knew we’d have hours alone

and if you heard a hollow
voice spit these ill-advised
questions, would nothing follow?
I wouldn’t be surprised.

(first published in Poetry Review, Winter 2004/2005)

More Poems from 'Pessimism For Beginners'

Selected Poems

Penguin, 2006 [isbn 0141026073]

The best of Sophie's poems from her previous books, as well as some new ones from her forthcoming Carcanet collection Pessimism for Beginners.

'Sophie Hannah’s sparkling, wry poems about life, love and loss adjusting are the perfect riposte to those who whinge that modern poetry doesn’t rhyme. This rhymes, scans and makes brilliant use of complex formal techniques in poems that celebrate the vagaries of the human body, mind and heart.’ - Christina Patterson, Independent

Read a poem from 'Selected Poems'

First of the Last Chances

Carcanet Press, 2003 [isbn 1857546261]

One of twenty titles chosen for the Next Generation promotion in June 2004.

Sophie Hannah’s first book was greeted with amazement. The Poetry Review declared, ‘Shall I put it in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.’ Each subsequent colletion has been formally more inventive, thematically more complex, yet each has met with a similar welcome, and she has become that rare thing, an acclaimed and best-selling poet.

'First of the Last Chances' combines traditional techniques of metre and rhyme with a sharp sense of contemporary life. In this, her fourth collection of poetry, Sophie Hannah explores and celebrates the complex interactions and strong feelings involved in everyday experience, in poems that are memorable, witty and moving.

‘Sophie Hannah is already among the best at comprehending in rhyming verse the indignity of having a body and the nobility of having a heart.’ (Jeremy Noel Tod, The Guardian)

‘She ranks among the best recent practitioners of light verse, sharing with Ewart fluency and a good ear, emulating Wendy Cope in her sly wit and blending an eye for the absurdities in human behaviour with compassion.’ (Alan Brownjohn, Sunday Times)

‘Sophie Hannah is a poet of considerable skill. She employs a wide variety of rhyming forms, and you can trust her not to trip you up with a metrical infelicity. A shrewd and accurate observer of the world around her, and of her own life, she is often very funny. This collection, her fourth, is arguably her best so far. (Wendy Cope, ‘Books of the Year’, The Oldie)

Available from www.carcanet.co.uk

Some poems from 'First of the Last Chances'

Love Me Slender: poems about love

Duffy and Snellgrove, Australia, 2000 [isbn 1875989692]

A poem from the book:

Against Road-building

He hated roads. He loved the land.
He tended to forget
Or else he didn’t understand
That roads were how we met.

He loved long walks. He hated cars.
He often put them down.
Without them, though, I’d have reached Mars
Before I reached his town.

Now that I’ve seen bad air pervade
An atmosphere once sweet
I wish the car was never made
That drove me to his street.

Now that I’ve felt a world explode
As I had not before
I wish they’d never built the road
That led me to his door.

More from 'Love Me Slender'

Leaving and Leaving You

Carcanet Press, 1999 [isbn 1857544072]

‘Hannah’s poetry, cunning in its precise use of traditional form, manages to bring into play the freedoms we associate with modernism. Here is a poet of immense resource, witty and hearbreaking by turns, always fully alive in her language. ‘Leaving and Leaving You’ focuses on love, loss and the different ways in which people - for better or worse - can be significant to each other. What draws us together and what keeps us apart? Hannah is fascinated by the ways in which others enter and leave our lives, and the imprints they make.’

‘I love Hannah’s poetry. Her rhyming is as convoluted and densely patterned as her subjects are intractable. Hannah answers the tangled miseries of everyday life with complex internal argument and layering of sounds, and moves through minefields of emotion with instinctive grace.’ (Times Education Supplement)

‘The title poem, Leaving and Leaving You, had me in tears. Her range is astonishing: most readers will come away having been changed or delighted.’ (Tom Payne, ‘Books of the Year’, Daily Telegraph)

Available from www.carcanet.co.uk

Some Poems from 'Leaving and Leaving You'

Hotels Like Houses

Carcanet Press, 1996 [isbn 1857542525]

Won an Arts Council Writer’s Award and a North West Arts Writer’s Award

Sophie Hannah’s first book ‘The Hero and the Girl Next Door’ (Carcanet, 1995) earned her a remarkably big audience: her broadcasts and public readings throughout the country have proved extremely popular. Her poems move beyond satire to the heart of the modern matter: loves, lusts, losses, worldly foibles, how people see themselves and how others see them. ‘Hotels Like Houses’ provides a new range of romantic ironies, light and dark laughter, for her readership. The Poetry Review declared: ‘Shall I put it in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.’

‘The brightest young star in British poetry’ (Judith Palmer in the Independent)

‘Deadly, sexy ditties that linger in the mind like all true poems’ (Irish Independent)

‘A poet of subtlety and sophistication’ (Rachel Simhon in the Daily Telegraph)

Available from www.carcanet.co.uk

The Hero and the Girl Next Door

Carcanet Press, 1995 [isbn 1857541138]

Won an Eric Gregory Award

The virtuosity and high spirits of Sophie Hannah’s poems are unusual at any time of day. She handles rhymed metrical forms with wily insouciance and passes the memorability test with flying colours. A surrealising impulse unsettles even the most tidy of ther stanzas with a shrewd imaginative wantonness.

‘Sophie Hannah is a real star.’ (P J Kavanagh in the Daily Telegraph)

‘Shall I put it in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.’ (Poetry Review)

‘The brightest young female poet of the decade’ (Independent)

Available from www.carcanet.co.uk

Some Poems from 'The Hero and the Girl Next Door'

Second Helping of Your Heart

Frogmore Press, 1994 [isbn 189816701x]

A limited edition pamplet.

Something Coming

The pavement shone with news of something coming,
or just with rain. She took it as a warning,
identical to last time - first the humming,
then thunder, then his letter in the morning.

She did her best to see some sort of sense
in all these things, to make them fit together.
At the same time, she laughed at the pretence
that love could be connected to the weather,

which can’t be true, or life would be too frightening
to live. Next time, she swore she’d go to bed
and not stay up to study trends of lightning,
and wonder what, if anything, they said.

Early Bird Blues

Smith/Doorstop Books, 1993 [isbn 1869961420]

A limited edition pamphlet.

A poem from the book:

No Wonder

This love looks set to grow extremely tall.
I chart its weekly progress on the wall

the way my mum made pencil marks above
my sister’s head and mine. I’ve called it love

since it began, but now I have some proof -
infatuation stops before the roof

while love climbs bravely up to bash its head.
The bleeding starts. No wonder hearts are red.

'Those who care about poetry should besiege the publisher for Sophie Hannah's first book. (Spectator)

POETRY FOR CHILDREN

Who Will Comfort Toffle? - by Tove Jansson

New verse translation by Sophie Hannah, Sort of Books, 2003
[isbn 0953522792]

'A wonderful poet' (Kate Kellaway in The Observer)

Available from www.sortof.co.uk

Read an Extract

The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My - by Tove Jansson

New verse translation by Sophie Hannah, Sort of Books, 2001
[isbn 0953522741]

‘A poet of sassy urban heartache, deftness, humour and considerable ingenuity...A book that manages to be both simple and imaginatively probing - a rare achievement’ (Michael Glover, Independent)

Available from www.sortof.co.uk

Read an Extract

The Box Room - poems for children

Orchard Books, 2001 [isbn 184121793x]

Money boxes, paint boxes, egg boxes, post boxes...There are boxes everywhere! But what mysteries do they hold? Sophie Hannah lifts the lid and invites you in to explore The Box Room, a vibrant collection of original poems from ‘the brightest young star in British poetry’ (The Independent). Piled higgledy-piggledy inside you will find shape poems, limericks, acrostics and even a pantoum!

Read a Poem from 'The Box Room'

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