Description
In this innovative series of public lectures at Newcastle University, leading contemporary poets speak about the craft and practice of poetry to audiences drawn from both the city and the university. The lectures are then published in book form by Bloodaxe, giving readers everywhere the opportunity to learn what the poets themselves think about their own subject. Ruth Padel's lectures link metaphor to silence and white space on a page. Equating a poem's music with its politics, she explores tone, register and harmony, suggesting that how poems hold our "attention" is through "tension". Finally, she investigates what it means for poems that they are "given to" other people. With her trademark blend of literary analysis, psychological and mythical learning, an intimate knowledge of Greek poetics plus a generous and joyful trust in the energy of today's poetry, Ruth Padel plumbs unheard rhymes, Echo and Narcissus, the silent music of John Cage, and what happens when Paul Durcan plays Seamus Heaney at ping pong. She wears her erudition lightly, paying playful attention to the resonances of many different poems - and to their smaller atoms, words and syllables. A fascinating and groundbreaking book, Silent Letters of the Alphabet is a gift for anyone writing, reading or teaching poetry today.
About the Author
Ruth Padel has published ten poetry collections, most recently, Darwin: A Life in Poems (2009), a biography through lyric poems of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, The Mara Crossing (2012) and Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth (2014). Her non-fiction includes a study of rock music and Greek myth, two studies of Greek tragedy and the mind, and a nature book tracing her journeys in search of tigers in Bhutan, Nepal, Laos, Sumatra, Russia, China and India. Her books on reading modern poetry, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey, came out of her weekly column in The Independent on Sunday. She gave the Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures at Newcastle University in 2008, published as Silent Letters of the Alphabet (Bloodaxe Books, 2010). In 2010, drawing on her work in tropical conservation, she published her first novel, Where the Serpent Lives.
Book Information
ISBN 9781852248277
Author Ruth Padel
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
About the Author
Ruth Padel has published ten poetry collections, most recently, Darwin: A Life in Poems (2009), a biography through lyric poems of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, The Mara Crossing (2012) and Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth (2014). Her non-fiction includes a study of rock music and Greek myth, two studies of Greek tragedy and the mind, and a nature book tracing her journeys in search of tigers in Bhutan, Nepal, Laos, Sumatra, Russia, China and India. Her books on reading modern poetry, 52 Ways of Looking at a Poem and The Poem and the Journey, came out of her weekly column in The Independent on Sunday. She gave the Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures at Newcastle University in 2008, published as Silent Letters of the Alphabet (Bloodaxe Books, 2010). In 2010, drawing on her work in tropical conservation, she published her first novel, Where the Serpent Lives.
Book Information
ISBN 9781852248277
Author Ruth Padel
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
