GROUND WATER
by Matthew Hollis

Bloodaxe Books
ISBN: 185224657X
Paperback – 64 pages (29 January 2004)
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In this sparkling debut, Matthew Hollis immerses us in the undercurrents of our lives. Love and loss are buoyed by a house full of milk, an orchard underwater, the laws of walking on water. Rainwater, floodwater, flux – the liquid landscapes which shift relentlessly in Ground Water – threaten and comfort by turns.

Matthew Hollis’s poems are brimming with courage in adversity as well as the promise of renewal, culminating in a powerful sequence about his father’s struggle with terminal illness. Ground Water is a startling first collection from a remarkable new poet.

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Independent, Independent on Sunday and Spectator, Books of the Year 2004, recommendation

From reviews of Ground Water:

'An impressive debut... the metaphorical language is finely judged, touching both the landscapes and the people crawling its surface with a shrewd but never less than sympathetic gaze.'
D.J. Taylor, Guardian
'Matthew Hollis shows an impressive confidence in the promptings of the imagination and no desire at all to ingratiate himself. Craft, not attitude, is what counts. Poems are sometimes called "quiet" when really they're inaudible. His are genuinely quiet, drawing in the ear to enjoy, for example, his artful rendering in slowed folk-song rhythm of the terror and excitement of floods.'
Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times
'Nothing in this first collection is clumsy... Ground Water is never sentimental, a tribute to the author's attention to the way in which he makes the language of his poetry an event in itself... it announces Matthew Hollis as a fascinating prospect.'
Stephen Knight, Times Literary Supplement
'A debut collection of strking accomplishment and emotional range.'
Guardian
'A first collection from a young poet of real promise. His poems are technically assured, but sweetened by a well managed sentimentality.'
Independent on Sunday
'Hollis's language is often scrupulous and surprising: he relishes the words as the puts them down, without preening.'
Daily Telegraph
'Affecting, redolent with sorrow but resolutely tough-minded.'
Poetry Book Society Bulletin

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101 POEMS AGAINST WAR
edited by Matthew Hollis and Paul Keegan

Faber and Faber
ISBN: 0571220347
Paperback – 160 pages (3 March, 2003)
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From the earliest times poets have spoken out against the horrors of war – many dying on the battlefields on which they wrote.

This extraordinary anthology gathers together the most startling poems against war ever written – from an infamous last stand in Ancient Greece to the chemical warfare of the present day Gulf. Featuring many of our most treasured poets – Wilfred Owen, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith and Emily Dickinson among them – 101 Poems Against War selects too from the poems being written across the barricades: the enemy soldier, a German widow, a young Vietnamese boy, and by the Arabic poets of today.

From the men who held their dying friends to the agony of the women left behind, this anthology gathers moments of warning and protest from all corners of the earth: the times in which it was left to the poets to speak out against the true terror of war.

All royalties from the sale of this book will go to Mines Advisory Group

The Times, Books of the Year 2003, recommendation

From reviews of 101 Poems Against War:

'101 Poems Against War is timely. Though published before the Iraq War, its resonances are compelling. . . . The experience of war is everywhere in the Faber anthology.'
Irish Times
'In a literary response to the groundswell of public opinion against war in Iraq … this latest moving anthology will capture the mood of much of the nation.'
Independent
'The greatest power of war poetry lies in its integrity, in the way it can work to close the imaginative gulf between those who may sit at home and those who must meet horror face to face. The poems in this volume (the proceeds of which go to charity) work to adjust a dangerously wall-eyed world view.'
The Times

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STRONG WORDS
modern poets on modern poetry
edited by W. N. Herbert and Matthew Hollis

Bloodaxe Books
ISBN: 1852245158
Paperback – 320 pages (26 October, 2000)
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Poetry has never been so rigorous and diverse, nor has its audience been so numerous and engaged. Strong words? Not if the poets are right. As Ezra Pound wrote: ‘You would think anyone wanting to know about poetry would go to someone who knew something about it.’ That’s exactly what Bloodaxe has done with this judicious and comprehensive selection of British, Irish and American manifestos by some of modern poetry’s finest practitioners.

Opening the 20th century account with Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot, the book moves through key later figures including W. H. Auden, Ted Hughes, Stevie Smith and Dylan Thomas. America is richly represented too, from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams to the influential New England poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Sylvia Plath.

Strong Words then brings the issues fully up to date with over 30 specially commissioned statements from contemporary writers including Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Simon Armitage, Selima Hill, Paul Muldoon and Douglas Dunn, amounting to a new overview of the poetry being written at the start of the 21st century.

For poets and readers, for critics, teachers and students of creative writing and contemporary poetry, this is essential reading. As well as representing many of the most important poets of the last hundred years, Strong Words charts many different stances and movements, from Modernism to Postmodernism, from Futurism to the future theories of poetry. This landmark book champions the continuing dialogue of these voices, past and present, exploring the strongest form that words can take: the poem.

BBC Radio 3, Book of the Month, October 2000

Financial Times, Books of the Year 2000, recommendation

From reviews of Strong Words:

'utterly compelling . . . Strong Words brings together a diverse collection of essential commentaries in a single volume.'
BBC Radio 3
'as good a Bible as any.'
Poetry Review
'one turns to verse after reading Strong Words with new energy, inspiration and insight.'
Times Literary Supplement
'indispensable'
Financial Times
'an erudite and sophisticated book, a mosaic of the 20th century’s stylistic variety and formal ingenuity'
Scotland on Sunday

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THE BOY ON THE EDGE OF HAPPINESS
by Matthew Hollis

Smith/Doorstop Books
ISBN: 1869961803
Paperback – 28 pages (31 May 1996)
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'Matthew Hollis founded ibid in 1993 but, with proper discretion, has not used it to publish a book of his own poems. His first collection, from Smith/Doorstop Books, is about as good as you are likely to get from a new poet. It is intelligent, unpretentious, sometimes funny, and leaves a good taste in the mouth. There is no fashionable laddish giggling or sneering, just a sharp wit, critical or compassionate as need be.'
– Books in Scotland

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