Based on a series of interviews and portraits, Tim Neat paints a compelling portrait of the humanity and depth of these poets and their lives. The book forms the second part of a four book oral history of Scotland, which began with The Summer Walkers.

In this essay, originally delivered as a lecture to The Blake Society in 1994, Welsh poet David Annwn considers the origin of Blake's vision of the Bard, tracing it back through Thomas Gray to the great Welsh bardic poems of Aneurin and Taliesin. He goes on to follow its recent history, from W.B. Yeats to the modernist poetics of Robert Duncan.

Equally interested in the sensual and the serious, the erotic and the academic, this collection experiments with form, dialect, persona, and voice. Ultimately a hybrid document, Lucy Negro, Redux harnesses blues poetry, deconstructed sonnets, historical documents and lyric essays to tell the challenging, many-faceted story of the Dark Lady, her Shakespeare, and their real and imagined milieu.

The long-awaited sequel to the epic fantasy Dragon and Phoenix, and the conclusion of the Dragonlord series In The Last Dragonlord and Dragon and Phoenix Joanne Bertin created a world unlike our own, where Dragonlords soar in the skies above the many realms of the land. The Dragonlords' magic is unique, giving them the ability to change from dragon to human form; to communicate silently among themselves; and other abilities not known to mortals. For many millennia, the Dragonlords have been a blessing to the world, with their great magic and awesome power. And though they live far longer than the humans who they resemble when not in their draconic state, these fabled changelings are still loyal to their human friends. Now in Bard's Oath, their magic is not the only power abroad in the world. And not all the magic is as benign as theirs. Leet, a master bard of great ability and vaulting ambition, has his own magic, but of a much darker nature. Years ago, death claimed the woman he loved, setting him on a course to avenge her death, no matter the consequences. Now, mad with hatred and consumed by his thirst for revenge, Leet has set in motion a nefarious plot that ensnares the friend of a Dragonlord, using his bardic skills . . . and dark powers only he can summon, to accomplish his bitter task. Raven, a young horse-breeder friend of the Dragonloard Linden Rathan, is ensnared by Leet and under the bard's spell, is one of the bard's unwitting catspaws. When accused of a heinous crime, Raven turns to Linden, and while Dragonlords normally do not meddle in human affairs, Linden comes to Raven's aid, loath to abandon him in his time of desperate need. But Raven, and others victimized by Leet, are at the mercy of human justice. Can even a Dragonlord save them from a dire fate before it is too late? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

For his humanistic religious verse, his poignant and deeply personal antislavery poems, and, above all, his lifelong enthusiasm for liberty, nature, and the art of poetry, George Moses Horton merits a place of distinction among nineteenth-century African American poets. Enslaved from birth until the close of the Civil War, the self-taught Horton was the first American slave to protest his bondage in published verse and the first black man to publish a book in the South. As a man and as a poet, his achievements were extraordinary. In this volume, Joan Sherman collects sixty-two of Horton's poems. Her comprehensive introduction--combining biography, history, cultural commentary, and critical insight--presents a compelling and detailed picture of this remarkable man's life and art. George Moses Horton (ca. 1797-1883) was born in Northampton County, North Carolina. A slave for sixty-eight years, Horton spent much of his life on a farm near Chapel Hill, and in time he fostered a deep connection with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author of three books of poetry, Horton was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in May of 1996.

Trapped in a curse for a hundred years, the Bard of Souvac has traveled the length and breadth of the world, searching always for a way to be freed from his prison of immortality; but first he must find the truth about those who imprisoned him in life. Now with a glimmer of hope, the Bard returns to the very place where the curse was initiated, knowing that this time, he would find the missing pieces to the mystery of his freedom. Gathering together an unlikely group, the Bard will travel high into the White Mountains of the North for the last piece of information that will grant him liberty, or so he believes...

The Bard's Blade is the start of the new Sorcerer's Song fantasy adventure series from Brian D. Anderson, bestselling author of The Godling Chronicles and Dragonvein. Mariyah enjoys a simple life in Vylari, a land magically sealed off from the outside world, where fear and hatred are all but unknown. There she's a renowned wine maker and her betrothed, Lem, is a musician of rare talent. Their destiny has never been in question. Whatever life brings, they will face it together. Then a stranger crosses the wards into Vylari for the first time in centuries, bringing a dark prophecy that forces Lem and Mariyah down separate paths. How far will they have to go to stop a rising darkness and save their home? And how much of themselves will they have to give up along the way? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

THE ANCIENT MAGIC OF IRELAND LET LOOSE IN THE STRINGS OF A HARP…. The wilderness of oak, ash, and thorn that men call the Forest of Andred existed long before the Saxons en­tered Britain, or Caesar's legions pressed against Kentish resistance, and even before the first iron-using Celts set foot on the island. Here lives the clan of mandrake—the strange, gnarled vegetable folk. Here trods the unicorn, with blue vapor curling softly from nostrils soft as a woman's breast and dainty, precise hooves lethal as maces. Here are the sacred groves long abandoned, where Druids once fed the trees with human blood. Through this forest of sorcery and a society governed by the sword travels Felimid mac Fal, Bard of Erin, descendant of Druids and the Tuatha de Danann—the ancient faery race of Ireland, armed only with his harp and the fierce magical power of his poetry....