Life Saving: Why We Need Poetry - Introductions to Great Poets - Hardcover

Hart, Josephine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844088715 ISBN 13: 9781844088713

Publisher: Virago, 2012

Synopsis

Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel Damage, had what she called 'a long love affair' with poetry. It was an affair that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age of sixty-nine in 2011. She said 'I was a word child' growing up in Ireland 'a country of word children where life was language before it was anything else'. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline,'a route map through life'.

In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer, began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own admission, Josephine Hart gave 'dead poets society' . But she also gave them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in their own right.

Life Saving leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry matters.

About this title

About the Author

Josephine Hart (1942-2011) was the bestselling author of Damage, Sin, Oblivion and The Reconstructionist. She was a Director of Haymarket Publishing and founded Gallery Poets before going on to produce a number of West End plays. As well writing novels, she was a `poetry evangelist' and her Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the British Library inspired two edited poetry books: Catching Life By the Throat and Words that Burn. She was married to Maurice Saatchi and had two sons.

From the Back Cover

`Poetry. This trinity of sound, sense and sensibility
never let me down, it expressed what I believed
inexpressible; provided me with a route
map through life'

From the Inside Flap

Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel Damage, had what she called 'a long love affair' with poetry. It was an affair that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age of sixty-nine in 2011. She said 'I was a word child' growing up in Ireland 'a country of word children where life was language before it was anything else'. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline,'a route map through life'.

In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer, began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own admission, Josephine Hart gave 'dead poets society' . But she also gave them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in their own right.

Life Saving leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry matters.

Introduced by Peter Stothard with an Afterword by Josephine Hart's husband, Lord Saatchi.

Edition details

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844088715
• ISBN 13: 9781844088713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368