Several Forms of Speech - Softcover

Arnold Rattenbury

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0954869184 ISBN 13: 9780954869182

Publisher: Smokestack Books, 2008

Synopsis

Several Forms of Speech: New, Early, Escaped and Last Poems brings together poems written by the distinguished poet Arnold Rattenbury over a sixty year period. The earliest was published on the eve of D-Day; the last was written as part of the campaign to save the Community Hospital in Blaenau Ffestiniog in North Wales, where Rattenbury lived. These poems are written in many different voices - public and private, personal and political, lyrical and satirical. Some are new, others are uncollected or from unfinished books. An extract from a verse-play rubs shoulders with a chapter from an unpublished verse novel. Idiosyncratic, technically brilliant and eloquent with passionate anger, Several Forms of Speech features a cast of painters and paintings, clowns and mummers, friends and foes. It s a book about art and love, empire and war, faith and community. And it is a reaffirmation of the necessity of Revolution.

About this title

About the Author

Arnold Rattenbury was born in 1921 in China, where his parents were Methodist missionaries. After the Second World War he edited the radical magazines Our Time and Theatre Today, and worked full-time for the Communist Party before embarking on a career as an exhibition designer. He published seven books of poetry, Second Causes, Man Thinking, Dull Weather Dance, Morris Papers, The Frigger Makers, Living Here and Mr Dick s Kite. He died in April 2007, shortly after putting together Several Forms of Speech.

Edition details

• Publisher: Smokestack Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0954869184
• ISBN 13: 9780954869182
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64