New and Collected Poems

New
Paperback
2010
$20.78

Ruth Fainlight is one of Britain's most distinguished poets. Born in New York City, she has lived mostly in England since the age of 15, publishing her first collection, Cages, in 1966. Her poems 'give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious events' (A.S. Byatt). Each is a balancing act between thought and feeling, revealing otherness within the everyday, often measuring subtle shifts in relationships between women and men. Images of the moon, however interpreted - whether as stern and stony presence or protective maternal symbol - recur throughout her work. Peter Porter described one of her collections as having 'the steadiness and clarity of the moon itself'. This substantial New & Collected Poems covers work written over 50 years, drawing on over a dozen books as well as a whole new collection. It also includes her translations of Sophia de Mello Breyner, Jean Joubert, Sophocles, and several leading modern Latin American poets, including Cesar Vallejo, Blanca Varela, Elsa Cross and Victor Manuel Mendiola, and two of her opera libretti, The Dancer Hotoke and The Bride in Her Grave.

Synopsis

Ruth Fainlight is one of Britain's most distinguished poets. Born in New York City, she has lived mostly in England since the age of 15, publishing her first collection, Cages, in 1966. Her poems 'give us truly new visions of usual and mysterious events' (A.S. Byatt). Each is a balancing act between thought and feeling, revealing otherness within the everyday, often measuring subtle shifts in relationships between women and men. Images of the moon, however interpreted - whether as stern and stony presence or protective maternal symbol - recur throughout her work. Peter Porter described one of her collections as having 'the steadiness and clarity of the moon itself'. This substantial New & Collected Poems covers work written over 50 years, drawing on over a dozen books as well as a whole new collection. It also includes her translations of Sophia de Mello Breyner, Jean Joubert, Sophocles, and several leading modern Latin American poets, including Cesar Vallejo, Blanca Varela, Elsa Cross and Victor Manuel Mendiola, and two of her opera libretti, The Dancer Hotoke and The Bride in Her Grave.

$20.78

Quantity

10 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 544
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 25 Nov 2010
ISBN 10: 1852248858
ISBN 13: 9781852248857

Media Reviews

'Ruth Fainlight has always been a painterly poet, sensuous and observant, who has paid particular attention to myth as it shapes destiny or gives meaning - the reader is aware of images being thought and felt through, the mind winding itself into narratives, prompted now by pain, now loss, now keen pleasure' - George Szirtes, Times Literary Supplement. 'If there is a suggestion of feminist defiance here, so much the better; at least Fainlight isn't strident. With so much talent and confidence, she doesn't need to be' - Derek Mahon, London Review of Books.

Author Bio

Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City in 1931. She was educated in the United States and England, and has lived in England since the age of 15, mostly in London. She lived in Spain for four years in her 20s, and has spent long periods in France and Morocco. Her first poetry collection, Cages, was published in 1966. She was Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985 and 1990. She was Writing Tutor (for libretti) at the Performing Arts Labs, International Opera and Music Theatre Labs in the UK in 1997-99. Her New & Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2010) covers work written over 50 years, drawing on over a dozen books as well as a whole new collection, translations and libretti. Four of those collections were originally published by Bloodaxe, including Sugar-Paper Blue (1997), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. Other collections were published by Macmillan, Hutchinson and Sinclair-Stevenson. Ruth Fainlight's collections of short stories include Daylife and Nightlife (Andre Deutsch, 1971) and Dr Clock's Last Case and Other Stories (Virago, 1994). As a poet, short-story writer and translator, she has contributed to many anthologies. Her own work has been translated into Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian, and she has herself published translations from the Portuguese of the poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner, and from the Spanish of several Latin American poets represented in her New & Collected Poems. She has also written four libretti: The Dancer Hotoke (1991), a chamber opera with music by Erika Fox, performed as part of the Royal Opera's 'Garden Venture' in 1991 and shortlisted for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera; The European Story (based on her poem of the same title, 1993), also commissioned by the Royal Opera House; and Bedlam Britannica, which was commissioned by Channel 4 Television for the series War Cries in 1995; and The Bride in Her Grave. Her translation (with Robert J. Littman) of The Theban Plays by Sophocles (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone) was published in 2009 in the Johns Hopkins University Press's New Translations from Antiquity series. She lives in London, and is married to the writer Alan Sillitoe, with whom she collaborated on an adaptation of Lope de Vega's play Fuenteovejuna, commissioned by the National Theatre and published as All Citizens Are Soldiers. She has received the Hawthorden Award and the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. An audio CD, Ruth Fainlight Reading from her Poems, was issued by The Poetry Archive in 2008.