Abel Baker Charlie Delta Epic Sonnets

Smith, Ken

ISBN 10 : 0906427258 ISBN 13 : 9780906427255

Editeur : Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 1982

Synopsis

Set in various pubs – in Exeter, Leeds and Bradford – this group of poems eavesdrops on the conversations of two old friends, Abel Baker, a mariner home from sea, and the landsman, the gypsy, Charlie Delta. The poems record what they see and say and hear: snatches of stories, scraps of song and patter, reminiscence, disconnected remarks, the punchlines of jokes. Many of the poems are fragmentary monologues with unidentified speakers and characters. Abel and Charlie are everyman out on the town: for too long two drinks under par and fast making up for it, weary and worse for wear but still singing. Or they can be taken as modern evocations of the Seafarer and the Wanderer of the Exeter Book, still homeless and kinless. The definition of an epic sonnet is that it should be neither.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Ken Smith (1938-2003) was a major voice in world poetry, a writer whose work shifted territory with time, from land to city, from Yorkshire, America and London to war-ravaged Eastern Europe. He was called ‘the godfather of the new poetry’ because his politically edgy, cuttingly colloquial, muscular poetry influenced a whole generation of younger British poets, from Simon Armitage to Carol Ann Duffy. Ken Smith was born in Rudston, East Yorkshire, the son of an itinerant farm labourer. He worked in Britain and America as a teacher, freelance writer, barman, magazine editor, potato picker, BBC reader and creative writing fellow, and was writer-in-residence at Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1985-87. He received America’s highly prestigious Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1997, and a Cholmondeley Award in 1998. Ken Smith was the first poet to be published by Bloodaxe, with his pamphlet Tristan Crazy in 1978. Smith’s first book, The Pity, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1967, and his second, Work, distances/poems, by Swallow Press, Chicago, in 1972. His early books span a transition from his preoccupation with land and myth (when he lived in Yorkshire, Devon and America) to his later engagement with urban Britain and the politics of radical disaffection (when he lived in East London). The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (Bloodaxe, 1982; reissued 1989) covers the first half of his writing career. In 1986 Ken Smith’s collection Terra was shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. In 1987 Bloodaxe published his collected prose, A Book of Chinese Whispers. Four of his collections, Terra (1986), Wormwood (1987), The heart, the border (1990) and Tender to the Queen of Spain (1993), were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His last separate collection, Wild Root (1998), a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. All these collections are included in his second Bloodaxe compilation, Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (2002), the sequel to The Poet Reclining. In 1989 Harrap published Inside Time, Ken Smith’s book about imprisonment, about Wormwood Scrubs and the men he met there. This was published in paperback by Mandarin in 1990. Ken Smith was working in Berlin when the Wall came down, writing a book about East and West Berlin: this turned into Berlin: Coming in from the Cold (Hamish Hamilton, 1990; Penguin paperback, 1991. He edited Klaonica: poems for Bosnia (Bloodaxe Books, 1993) with Judi Benson, and with Matthew Sweeney co-edited Beyond Bedlam (Anvil Press Poetry, 1997), a book of poems by mentally ill people. He died on 27 June 2003 from a hospital infection caught while being treated for Legionnaires’ Disease, which he had contracted months earlier in Cuba. His last poems were published in You Again: last poems & other words (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) along with other uncollected work, tributes from other poets, photographs, a biographical portrait and interviews covering the whole range of his life and work. His Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in October 2018, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Bloodaxe's first title, Ken Smith's Tristan Crazy (1978), and with what would have been his 80th birthday.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1982
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0906427258
• ISBN 13: 9780906427255
• Reliure: Brochure
• Nombre de pages: 20
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible