Resistance is a key concept for understanding the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and for approaching the poetry of the period. This collection of 15 critical essays explores how poetry and resistance interact, set against a philosophical, historical and cultural background. In the light of the upheavals of the age, and the changing perception of the nature of language, resistance is seen to lie at the core of poetic preoccupations, moving poetic language forward. From this perspective, the resistance of poetry is connected with the human call to solidarity, resilience, and, ultimately, meaning. The volume covers poetry from Hardy, Yeats and Auden, among others, to contemporary writers like Hugo Williams and Linton Kwesi Johnson.

*Brings the story of the Cassini-Huygens mission and their joint exploration of the Saturnian system right up to date. *Combines a review of previous knowledge of Saturn, its rings and moons, including Titan, with new spacecraft results in one handy volume. *Provides the latest and most spectacular images, which will never have appeared before in book form. *Gives a context to enable the reader to more easily appreciate the stream of discoveries that will be made by the Cassini-Huygens mission. *Tells the exciting story of the Huygens spacecraft’s journey to the surface of Titan.

'Superb ... There is no disputing the enormous knowledge, the sheer love of books that is gathered here' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY ____________________ A great and fascinating work from Scottish literary legend Alasdair Gray, beautifully illustrated throughout, chronicling the history of how literature spread and developed throughout the world. This is a unique history of literature as presented through the collected and annotated prefaces of major writers, including commentary by a range of authors including James Kelman, A.L. Kennedy, and Virginia Woolf. The result of a lifetime's reading and creative labour, intellectual and artistic, The Book of Prefaces will delight, amaze and inform both casual browsers and students. Its like will not be seen again for at least another millennium. ____________________ Praise for Alasdair Gray 'A necessary genius' ALI SMITH 'One of the brightest intellectual and creative lights Scotland has known in modern times' NICOLA STURGEON

Edwin Morgan's restless imagination moved easily between multiple worlds, voices and identities. His own life story, told here for the first time, also reveals a range of identities - as academic, cultural activist, radical writer, international traveller, gay man and national poet. These identities were sometimes in conflict, or kept hidden and apart. Beyond the Last Dragon, written with his full support, explores hitherto unknown archive resources and creative work. It recounts an amazing and sometimes troubled career, using the poet's own letters, poems and plays from the 1930s to the present day to uncover the origins of his remarkable - and life-long - inventiveness and flair. All this is set against Edwin Morgan's moving struggle against 'the last dragon' of cancer, and to remain creatively alive in the face of suffering in the final years of his life. This prize-winning biography was published just days after the poet's death. James McGonigal now adds a new chapter to describe subsequent events.

Complete poems are bulky and too heavy to carry around. Collected poems pretend to be complete, but usually are not. Selected poems are altogether unpretentious and reader-friendly. But they can be problematic. Who decides what poems are important for inclusion in a volume of selected poems? When the selection occurs during the author’s lifetime, may one assume that the author was involved? What motivates the choice of one poem over another? How do readers’ preferences influence this choice? How do new readers and familiar readers of a poet negotiate the poems that are left out of the selection? The essays in this volume address these questions in a variety of ways, and also provide an overview of poetic writing from modernist poets to the present day, using selections from the 1940s until now. They offer new insight into the uses, both pedagogical and critical, of selection. Because Selected Poems usually address a large general public, these essays have also been written for all those who wish to know more about how these slimmer, more attractive volumes are produced.

This book considers the relationship between English and Scottish poets and the international concrete poetry movement of the 1950s-1970s, focusing on the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Edwin Morgan, Dom Sylvester Houédard and Bob Cobbing. It will be a vital resource for students and scholars of modernism, intermedia art and British literature.