{"product_id":"next-billy-mackinnon-9783988321572","title":"Next: Collected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003ePoetry by the screenwriter of 'Hideous Kinky' starring Kate Winslet, and script editor of Jane Campion's 'The Piano'.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis poetry volume is the yield of almost nine years of notebooks, observations and locations, mostly Athens and Berlin, but a smattering of London, Marrakech, Cameroon and West Bengal. I am a worker in film and stage: it is a wandering life.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe act of observation may be at the heart of all this, of observed events on a daily, human scale, but also of recorded personal feelings and reactions, a springboard to some more generalised reality, to the mythos of the particular moment.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA lost button on a Berlin cafe pavement, a shabby girl in golden sandals, a civic rubbish bin, the lures of poverty, the nags of memory; each is commonplace enough, but a window, too, onto the sightlines and vanishing points of human possibility.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePoetry functions at the edge of grammar and hence the edge of meaning, with all its pitfalls and opportunities. Yet to quote an unexpected and surprising source, Anais Nin: 'In dreams we dream alone. Only reality is shared.' Not only author, but player in that concomitant. The imaginary speaker, the imagined self, imagined listener - all of that, of course. And yet there is the broader stage of common struggle and imagination whose best practitioner may yet remain the popular song. It wakes you, a half-discovered melody, half-invented, a fragment at your bedside. Not the stuff of dreams. A visitor, for real. The stuff of song, whose voice is simple in its simple imperative, simple in its life-affirmingness. Singer. Sing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eFor fans of Catullus, Tu Fu, Emily Dickinson, Anna Akhmatova, Berthold Brecht, Jacques Prevert, and Robert Graves.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Billy MacKinnon\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 3988321575\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9783988321572\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Vine Leaves Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/24\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 140\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.37lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.33d","brand":"Billy MacKinnon","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48659549225215,"sku":"9783988321572","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/next-billy-mackinnon-9783988321572","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}