Jenny Joseph Libri

Twice-voted poem of the year, Warning is an uplifting poem about growing older - now beautifully redesigned with new illustrations.

Jenny Joseph was no ordinary poet - and Led by the Nose is no ordinary memoir. Shaped around the smells of the English countryside, it is full of the wilful personality and the sly humour that characterised the purple-clad old woman in her iconic poem 'Warning'. Joseph's eccentricities permeate each chapter as she flows through the gardening year with its chores and blossoms, frequently leading the reader off the garden path to stop, smell the roses, and ignore the world for a while. Full of the sensual awareness of Jenny Joseph's poetry, Led by the Nose is a singular memoir: a work of delicious diversion and literary flair, horticultural anxieties and countercultural tendencies, providing a glimpse - or sniff - of the landscape of this treasured poet's life.

Twice-voted poem of the year, Warning is an uplifting poem about growing older.

The collection features Jenny Joseph's award-winning poem, "In Honor of Love," showcasing her evolved poetic voice. Readers will find her signature "thinking heart," but with a deeper urgency and resonance. The poems explore profound mysteries and push the boundaries of language, offering insights from an introspective perspective. Joseph's work captures the nuances of unspoken emotions, blending a stony clarity with personal depth, inviting readers to engage with the complexities of love and existence.

Combining poems with a thematic selection from other books, this collection explores the duality of existence, whether for children or adults, in poetry or prose. Dealing with the poet's attempt to present how things work at the core, it begins with poems from her last two collections, Ghosts and Other Company and All the Things I See.

Selected Poems draws on Jenny Joseph's first four collections of poetry, The Unlooked-for Season (1960), Rose in the Afternoon (1974), The Thinking Heart (1978) and Beyond Descartes (1983).

As in her poetry, so now in Extended Similes Jenny Joseph shows the influence on human lives of the mechanical workings of the world, illuminating many human states, especially love.

Jenny Joseph is known mainly as the author of Warning, her internationally renowned dramatic monologue in which a middle-aged character talks of her fantasies of old age. This collection of poems shows that Jenny Joseph's ability to convey the experiences of a 'thinking heart' is in no way diminished.

Báseň „Varování“, napsaná v roce 1961, byla v roce 1996 zvolena nejoblíbenější básní v Británii a je známá a oblíbená po celém světě. Její vyjádření vzdoru, tak živě a chytře podané, působí na buřiče v každém z nás, když tajně toužíme shodit okovy patřičnosti a užívat si radostnou volnost tím, že uděláme dlouhý nos na zbytek světa. V řádné ženě středního věku, která se vyžívá ve své představě upovídané staré báby v šokujícím oblečení a s potrhlým chováním, vytvořila Jenny Joseph postavu, jejíž myšlenky se citují na konferencích i pohřbech, používají se k povzbuzení chorých přátel a s potěšením si je připomínají děti i dospělí. Báseň, kterou najdete v učebnicích od Aljašky až po Singapur, se vyšívala, razítkovala, prošívala, zhudebňovala, tiskla na pohlednice, zdobily se s ní dorty a točily se podle ní filmy. Nyní se „Varování“ poprvé objevuje v České republice jako ilustrovaná kniha s kresbami Pythie Ashton-Jewell, speciálně upravená tak, aby odpovídala její jedinečné postavě a dodala pikantnosti její charakteristice.