From Base Materials
These poems are apocalyptic and sensory, coming from a place of hurt and love, of the human spirit struggling to transcend "base matter" and make sense of the world.
"From Base Materials is rich and various in its occasions. It ranges thematically from violence towards women, love in old age and surviving cancer, to translations from Arabic and Russian and a topical re-imagining of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The poems speak of formation and transformation, of the struggles of the human spirit to transmute "base matter" and to accept mortality and the frailty of the flesh with courage and compassion. Around a third of the verses from the Rubaiyat are in concrete shapes underlying the themes of ephemerality (hourglasses) and craftsmanship (pots and vessels) which capture the wry urbanity and rough humour of the throng of voices from the past whose thoughts and observations are now believed to have "composed" this best-loved of poems. For the long poem, "Love in Old Age", Jenny Lewis says: "Although it addresses a lover, it is really about multiple experiences of love (both real and imagined) throughout a long life and how I am as much a literary construct as a human individual. I have drawn on literature that has shaped me, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, early Celtic nature poetry and hermit poetry and, more recently, feminist writings such as those of Helene Cixous".
"From Base Materials is rich and various in its occasions. It ranges thematically from violence towards women, love in old age and surviving cancer, to translations from Arabic and Russian and a topical re-imagining of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The poems speak of formation and transformation, of the struggles of the human spirit to transmute "base matter" and to accept mortality and the frailty of the flesh with courage and compassion. Around a third of the verses from the Rubaiyat are in concrete shapes underlying the themes of ephemerality (hourglasses) and craftsmanship (pots and vessels) which capture the wry urbanity and rough humour of the throng of voices from the past whose thoughts and observations are now believed to have "composed" this best-loved of poems. For the long poem, "Love in Old Age", Jenny Lewis says: "Although it addresses a lover, it is really about multiple experiences of love (both real and imagined) throughout a long life and how I am as much a literary construct as a human individual. I have drawn on literature that has shaped me, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, early Celtic nature poetry and hermit poetry and, more recently, feminist writings such as those of Helene Cixous".
About the author
Jenny Lewis is an Anglo-Welsh poet, playwright, songwriter, children's author and translator who teaches poetry at Oxford University. She trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Art before reading English at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has worked as an advertising copywriter and a government press officer for, among others,the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has also written children's booksand plays and co-written a 26-part children's TV animation series, "James the Cat". Her first poetry sequence, "When I Became an Amazon" (Iron Press, 1996) was broadcast on BBC Woman's Hour, translated into Russian (Bilingua, 2002) and made into an opera with music by Gennadyi Shizoglazov which had its world premiere with the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Company in Perm, Russia,November 2017. A song Jenny co-wrote with the singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyanin the 1960's, 'Train Song', has been used on TV commercials by Reebok and Samsung and for several TV series including the US crime drama, True Detective.It has had over five million hits on YouTube. Since 2012 Jenny has been working with the Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh on an award-winning, Arts Council funded project, 'Writing Mesopotamia', which aims to build bridges and foster friendships between English and Arabic-speaking communities. It has produced a huge range of outcomes including art collaborations, films, three chapbooks published by Mulfran Press – "Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq" (2013), "Singing for Inanna" (2014) and "The Flood" (2017). Her work for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford includes "Map of Stars" (2002), "Garden of the Senses" (2005), "After Gilgamesh" (2011) and, with Yasmin Sidhwa and Adnan al-Sayegh, "Stories for Survival: aRe-telling of the 1001, Arabian Nights" (2015). She has published two collections with Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, "Fathom" (2007) and "Taking Mesopotamia" (2014). 55 poems from "Taking Mesopotamia" were published in Farsi (Soolar, Teheran 2017)and a fuller selection of her poems in English and Arabic, "Even at the Edge of the World" is forthcoming in 2018 from Dar Sutour, Baghdad/ Dar Al-Rafidain,Beirut. As part of the 'Writing Mesopotamia' project, "Gilgamesh Retold" won the Warden's Prize at Goldsmiths, London University for work that engages the public in innovative ways and it was also shortlisted for a Gladstone's Library Award. Jenny is currently completing a PhD on Gilgamesh at Goldsmiths.