Losing the Language: Poems 1966-2006 Including Classical Chinese Poetry Re-interpreted - Hardcover

Stephens, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0955648017 ISBN 13: 9780955648014

Publisher: WordWorkers' Press, 2008

Synopsis

A stunning collection of original work, Losing the Language confirms David Stephens as a major poetic talent. His poems, with their clear and distinctive voice, provide a breath of fresh air in the stuffy halls of English contemporary verse.

The range is illuminating; the scope scintillates. Throughout the forty years of poetry collected here, certain underlying ideas, values, tenets hold true. Above all, David Stephens engages and what an engagement! Essentially human, wonderfully diverse, recognisable: his poetry speaks to us directly.

The new interpretations of classical Chinese poetry fit. They are simply integral to the work, and are a model of clarity; a limpid perfection.

"Only connect, as E.M. Forster commented. Experience informs the poems without restricting them, providing a rich hinterland for the poet's achievement: a beautifully clear, shared sense. Dip in, dive out; a work in progress, provocative, profound.

About this title

About the Author

David Stephens, youngest son of a militant Welsh ex-coal miner and a Brixton-born merchant sea-woman and laundry worker, was born in South London on D-Day. He left school at 15 and has worked at many jobs in many places: long-distance lorry driver, clerk, labourer, community worker, film researcher, archaeologist and magazine editor among them; he studied media design at Plymouth College of Art and, later, Early Modern History at the University of Wales. These experiences formed and still inform his poetry. He is currently doing historical research for a film and is co-writing the script with Richard Carman.

Edition details

• Publisher: WordWorkers' Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0955648017
• ISBN 13: 9780955648014
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 128