Dear Friends,

After a quiet winter and early spring, we have two new titles to announce. Both these books are available to buy from us, either individually, or as a special offer bundle.

If you're outside the UK, they will soo be available to order from your local bookstore or favourite online retailer. See our international shipping page for more details.

Tim Lilburn

Harmonia Mundi

ISBN 978-1-9163935-6-1

‘One of our great visionary poets is manifesting kaleidoscopically.’

(Peter O’Leary)

We're thrilled to announce a new collection from Governer-General-Award-winning poet, Tim Lilburn. Harmonia Mundi borrows its title from Johannes Kepler’s melodious theory of the heavens, but the ‘alarming geometry’ that Lilburn presents in these forty-one poems is far from harmonious. The book is preoccupied with loss — with ‘beauty infiltrated everywhere’ — and by a feeling of political disaffection at the demise of certain sustaining paradigms. Harmonia Mundi is a timely and darkly visionary text, which, amid the spreading collapse of the world around us, clings to a single, urgent truth: ‘You must hate / nothing’.

Reliquiae Vol 10 No 1

Edited by Autumn Richardson & Richard Skelton

ISBN 978-1-9160951-8-2

‘We are the birds of fire.’

(Wabanaki Song)

It is our great joy to share that Reliquiae reaches its tenth anniversary this year!

Vol 10 No 1, the first of our special celebratory editions, is brimming with contemporary and ancient poetry and prose from around the world: 

There are Aztec hymns, Mayan, Inuit and Chinese creations myths; there are cosmologies from Babylonia and Assyria, and sacred songs from the Wabanaki of North America. There are poetic evocations of basalt, amber and chalcedony; of mother goddesses, and the ghosts of willow-trees awaiting embodiment. There are lake mists, quick suns and bird-bone moons. There are falling stars, spawning rivers and folded hills; cavernous depths, and visionary recitals of apocalyptic and ecstatic violence. There are invocations of the heron, ‘deity of the river’; and of luminous places where every wound vanishes.

There are the esoteric strivings of birds in flight, and the ephemerality of human agency set against the deep-time longevity of stones. There are ‘thin places’ and worlds ‘more permanent’ than the corporeal. There are newborn stars, nature-spirits, etheric doubles and desire-elementals. There are seventeenth century cosmologies describing the ‘perpetual Serenity and constant Spring’ of the antediluvian earth, and phantasmagorical theories of a prehistoric Eden at the north pole.

The first one hundred customers to purchase Reliquiae Vol 10 No 1 will also receive a beautiful art print of a Neo-Assyrian roaring lion.

Finally, a quick note to say that there have been three Subscriber-only music releases this year via the Aeolian Bandcamp Subscription, with more on the way soon. These releases are: 

Ustr, the third in a series of themed recordings following last year's Stur and Sutr.

Early Ornaments, a new collection of stark string and piano compositions steeped in late winter melancholy.

For Olomouc, a document of Richard's rehearsals for his performance in the Czech Republic in March.

To receive these releases, visit:

https://aeolian.bandcamp.com/subscribe

With our warmest Spring wishes,

Autumn & Richard