A puffin on the front cover and an otter on the back – two pottery sculptures by Sandra to help illustrate my new book now on sale at Shelley House bookshop, Bagni di Lucca and at

http://cinquemarzolibri.net/index.php?id_product=271&controller=product&id_lang=6 .

The book is called ‘Fifty Poems for Four Kingdoms / Cinquanta Poesie per Quattro Regni’ and, after last year’s success with ‘Septet’, is my second publication in Italy and the first with parallel texts in English and Italian. The four reigns are, of course, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. These are all areas that were once separate kingdoms. (If one thinks of Wales as a Principality one has to remember that in the eleventh century, under Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, it was a kingdom).

The volume is divided into a section for each kingdom and concludes with an additional one entitled ‘The Weather’. (It’s useful to know that the Italian for weather: ‘tempo’ also means time.)

The poems were written in the last twenty years and have been selected solely on the basis that they all refer to places in the United Kingdom. Although I have written many poems on Italy, I thought it would be rather more interesting to have poems about Britain if the book were published in Italy. Nostalgic brits could thus reminisce about areas they have visited in these northern isles and Italians may discover something new about the British Isles.

Here is something from England:

The book is priced Euros 12 and, apart from its contents, it could provide a useful way of increasing your Italian vocabulary, or alternatively ‘per gli Italian per espandere il vostro vocabolario inglese’.

Have a good read! Buona lettura!