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Pearl (2e)

Jane Draycott

Foreword by Bernard O'Donoghue

Pearl
10% off Audiobook (MP3 format) 2e
10% off Paperback 2e
10% off eBook (EPUB) 2e
Categories: 14th Century, British, Medieval, Old English / Anglo Saxon, Translation, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Classics
Edition: 2nd
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Audiobook (MP3 format) 2e 1 h 1 m
(Pub. Sep 2019)
9781784109295
£14.99 £13.49
Paperback 2e (64 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2018)
9781784106591
£9.99 £8.99
eBook (EPUB) 2e Needs ADE!
(Pub. Sep 2018)
9781784106607
£7.99 £7.19
Digital access available through Exact Editions
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Awards
  • Reviews
  • Jane Draycott's translation of Pearl reissued as a Carcanet Classic

    A Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation

    In a dream landscape radiant with jewels, a father sees his lost daughter on the far bank of a river: ‘my pearl, my girl’. One of the great treasures of the British Library, the fourteenth-century poem Pearl is a work of poetic brilliance; its account of loss and consolation has retained its force across six centuries. Jane Draycott in her new translation remakes the imaginative intensity of the original. This is, Bernard O’Donoghue says in his introduction, ‘an event of great significance and excitement’, an encounter between medieval tradition and an acclaimed modern poet.
    Jane Draycott’s previous collections from Carcanet Press include The Occupant (Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Over (T S Eliot Prize shortlist), Prince Rupert’s Drop (Forward Prize shortlist) and her 2011 prize-winning translation of the the medieval dream-elegy Pearl.   Other collections, from Two Rives Press, include Storms Under the Skin: Selected Poems ... read more
    Awards won by Jane Draycott Winner, 2023 A Cholomondeley Award
    'A host of subtle and spellbinding effects, testament to Dryacott's skill as a poet as well as her grasp of grief's physcological realities'
    Theophilus Kewk, The North


     'The language is marvellously modulated yet stirringly wild. Draycott has carried over into our tamer, tired world a strong, strange sense of how original, gorgeous and natural this old poem can be.'

     David Morley, Poetry Review


    'Draycott's version is compellingly human.'
    Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement
    Praise for Jane Draycott 'These are approachable poems, expressed in lucid language, and studded with clear images. They are finely wrought, knitting form and sound patterns beautifully, but holding these formal properties lightly... The Kingdom is moving, intriguing. It's a place I know I will keep returning too, to lose an hour our two.'
    Emma Simon, The Friday Poem
    'Draycott is rightly regarded as a poet of sensitivity and lyrical control. But these are not airy poems. Their mysteries are well served by the muscularity of her descriptions. Even the briefest poems here offer richly textured, shimmering language.'
    Maya Popa, TLS
    'These poems, especially when read in order in the collection as a whole, are deeply unsettling; yet there is love in them, and hope. There is also great tenderness and an awareness of a beauty that can still be valued in the fragility of the moment and the world.'
    Kathleen Bell, The High Window
     'I should make clear from the outset that it's a collection I like very much... This is a collection that speaks to the reader's doubts, uncertainties, fears, death-thoughts; there is no single reading and that, for me, makes it stronger... It anticipates the future, as art should.'
    London Grip
     'Draycott uses the language of dreams to make the quotidian illusionary, like a vapour captured in lexicon. Sleeplessness haunts the collection... Homeliness is pushed, just, over to Freud's unhomely conclusions. The dream world, enticing and enlightening as he might have it to be, proves no more accommodating than our own.'
    Lucy Cheseldine, STAND
    'Her searching curiosity and wonderful assurance make her an impeccable and central poetic intelligence.'
    Penelope Shuttle, Manhattan Review
     'I've waited some time to read something this intelligent, this sensuous and this crystalline. In fact The Night Tree is the finest collection I've read for ages.'
    Guardian
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