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  • Published: 15 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784745943
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

Paper Boat

New and Selected Poems 1961-2023




A collection of poems both old and new, spanning a career of ground-breaking writing. Dearly gave us Atwood’s first new poetry collection in over a decade; Paper Boat not only provides us with new wise, playful and thought stirring poems, but also for the first time collects a lifetime’s worth of older poems in one place.

An extraordinary career-spanning collection from one of the most revered poets and storytellers of our age

Tracing the legacy of Margaret Atwood – a writer who has fundamentally shaped our contemporary literary landscapes – Paper Boat assembles Atwood’s most vital poems in one essential volume.

In pieces that are at once brilliant, beautiful and hyper-imagined, Atwood gives voices to remarkably drawn characters – mythological figures, animals and everyday people – all of whom have something to say about what it means to live in a world as strange as our own. ‘How can one live with such a heart?’ Atwood asks, casting her singular spell upon the reader, and ferrying us through life, death and whatever comes next. Walking the tightrope between reality and fantasy as only she can, Atwood’s journey through poetry illuminates our most innate joys and sorrows, desires and fears.

Spanning six decades of work – from her earliest beginnings to brand new poems – this volume charts the evolution of one of our most iconic and necessary authors.

‘We should regard Atwood as a poet first and foremost – just one who happens to be a highly regarded novelist’ Sunday Herald

  • Published: 15 October 2024
  • ISBN: 9781784745943
  • Imprint: Chatto & Windus
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam trilogy. Her 1985 classic, The Handmaid's Tale, went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against the disempowerment of women, and with the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Its sequel, The Testaments, was published in 2019 and was a global number one bestseller and won the Booker Prize.

Atwood has won numerous awards including the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour for services to literature. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

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Praise for Paper Boat

Atwood at the height of her poetic powers: her imagery made tangible with sound

New York Times Book Review, on Dearly

Read these poems aloud, read them carefully, read them with joy and tears

Scotsman, on Dearly

She’s one of the few contemporary writers whose poetry and prose receive equal amounts of praise

Washington Post

What a book of magic Paper Boat is . . . a bright and cornucopic life force of a book . . . It resounds with the acuteness of Atwood’s wisdom, the warmth of her cold eye, her uniquely lit courage

Ali Smith, Guardian
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