![]() Quote of the Day
I'm filled with admiration for what you've achieved, and particularly for the hard work and the 'cottage industry' aspect of it.
Fleur Adcock
|
|
Book Search
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
|
Visible VoicesTranslating Verse into Script and Print 3000BC - AD2000Nicolas Barker![]() 10% off
Categories: 14th Century, 15th Century, 16th Century, 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, 21st Century, Ancient Greek and Roman, Arabic, British, Language, Medieval, Old English / Anglo Saxon, Translation
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (191 pages) 9781847772121 £14.99 £13.49
Traduttore, traditore: every translation is a betrayal. Reading verse, as opposed to speaking or listening to it, loses something. The mind’s ear is not so agile as the mind’s eye. Subtleties of assonance are less easily appreciated on the page than the beginnings and ends of lines, or rhyme-words, similarly (or, as striking, dissimilarly) spelt. Yet the movement of the poet’s eye, from line to line, column to column, or even across the page, with the reader in pursuit, has its own poetry.
In Visible Voices Nicolas Barker traces the development of poetry from its ancient origin as an oral medium to its modern incarnation as a primarily written or printed artform. The book moves from the pictograms of the Ancients Near East through the development of alphabetic scripts, the traditions of Medieval European manuscripts, the shift from script to print, all the way to the innovations and experiments of the modernist period. Stephane Mallarme's typographically exploded poem Un coup de des n'abolira pas le hasard, Barker writes, 'takes the problem that has haunted poets and their audiences over four thousand years to a logical conclusion: that is, how the evanescent iridescent idea in the poet's mind is to be registered in graphic form - what, in short, is the art of poetry?' Illustrated throughout with photographs of the texts and books under discussion, Visible Voices offers a rich, authoritative account of the changing face of poetry through the ages.
'This is Barker's fundamental achievement: to refresh his audience's engagement with poetry, and with the written and printed page.'
The Library |
Share this...
Quick Links
Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years!
Anvil Press Poetry
Aspects of Portugal
Audio Books
Carcanet Classics
Carcanet Fiction
Carcanet Film
Carcanet Poetry
FyfieldBooks
Lintott Press
Little Island Press
Lives and Letters
OxfordPoets
PN Review
Sheep Meadow Press
The Carcanet Blog
New Poetries VIII: Sinad Morrissey on Conor Cleary
read more
The Earliest Witnesses: G.C. Waldrep
read more
Conor Cleary: NPVIII: Meet the Contributor
read more
New Poetries VIII: Tara Bergin on Suzannah V. Evans
read more
Suzannah V. Evans: NPVIII: Meet the Contributor
read more
New Poetries VIII: Andrew Wynn Owen on Tristram Fane Saunders
read more
![]() |
![]() We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
|
|
This website ©2000-2021 Carcanet Press Ltd
|