Synopsis
Martial is alive and kicking in Brendan Kennelly's latter-day Dublin versions of the Spanish Roman poet. He is a satirist trying to define generosity, happiness and love, with scurrilous candour and piercing clarity, in brief punchy poems. But no matter how savage his attacks, he is always playful and compassionate. He is a sharp, visionary writer who knows the world about him and is in touch with the world within himself, at once bewildered, attentive and bitingly articulate. Martial Art is a book that packs a punch. KENNELLY ON MARTIAL: ‘If he’d been a boxer, he’d have developed a new kind of knockout punch, smiling at his victim as he walked back to his corner. His themes are many and varied. He writes of money, food, wine, furniture, style, power, sex, corruption, love, hatred, streets, darkness, families, poverty, snobbery, poets, poetry, polished deceit, aesthetic back-stabbers, High Art, low artists, metropolitan egotism and arrogance, politics, escape to the countryside, property, law, education, greed, manipulative men and women, cliques, loners, talkers and chatterboxes of every shade and motive, patrons, misery, the happy life, clothes, enemies, gossip, friends, flattery and the old constant problem of personal survival and hope of self-renewal. That’s Rome two thousand years ago. That’s Dublin today… Is one translating Martial? Or is Martial, smiling and mischievous as ever, translating the translator?’
About the Author
Brendan Kennelly (1936-2021) was one of Ireland's most distinguished and best loved poets, as well as a renowned teacher and cultural commentator. Born in 1936 in Ballylongford, Co. Kerry, he was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College, Dublin for over 30 years, and retired from teaching in 2005. He published over 30 books of poetry, including Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), which includes the whole of his book-length poem The Man Made of Rain (1998). He was best-known for two controversial poetry books, Cromwell, published in Ireland in 1983 and in Britain by Bloodaxe in 1987, and his epic poem The Book of Judas (1991), which topped the Irish bestsellers list: a shorter version was published by Bloodaxe in 2002 as The Little Book of Judas. His third epic, Poetry My Arse (1995), did much to outdo these in notoriety. All these remain available separately from Bloodaxe, along with his more recent titles: Glimpses (2001), Martial Art (2003), Now (2006), Reservoir Voices (2009), The Essential Brendan Kennelly: Selected Poems, edited by Terence Brown and Michael Longley, with audio CD (2011), and Guff (2013). His anthology The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me – co-edited with Neil Astley – is due from Bloodaxe in April 2022.
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