Chaotic Angels
Collected Poems in English
Published on 27. January 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-85224-723-2 (ISBN)
Description
Gwyneth Lewis was made National Poet of Wales in 2005, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She is a bilingual virtuoso, and has published six other books of poetry, three in each of her two languages. Chaotic Angels brings together the poems from her first three English collections, Parables & Faxes (1995), Zero Gravity (1998) and Keeping Mum (2003). Her modern epic A Hospital Odyssey (Bloodaxe, 2010) and later collection Sparrow Tree (2011) are published separately.
Reviews / Votes
The fact that Gwyneth Lewis writes in Welsh and English is central to the issues she addresses - Lewis is not always easy to locate as a poet, and in part this is because of her originality and her refusal to easily fall prey to current trends or trendiness. Her poetic lineage includes poets such as George Herbert, Joseph Brodsky and perhaps most prominently, W.H. Auden. And this is nowhere more evident than in her ability to resolve through poetry complex philosophical ideas, and to make the creative marriages of words and ideas that rhyme allows. -- Deryn Rees-Jones * PBS Bulletin *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 136 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
272 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-723-2 (9781852247232)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
01/2015
Bloodaxe Books Ltd
€10.99
Available for download
Person
Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's National Poet from 2005 to 2006, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. Her first six books of poetry in Welsh and English were followed by Chaotic Angels (2005) from Bloodaxe, which brings together the poems from her English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum, and by A Hospital Odyssey (2010), and Sparrow Tree (2011), winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012. Her other books include Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book about Depression (Flamingo, 2002) and Two in a Boat: A Marital Voyage (Fourth Estate, 2005) and The Meat Tree: new stories from the Mabinogion (Seren, 2010). Her Welsh collection, Y Llofrudd Iaith (Barddas, 2000), won the Welsh Arts Council Book of the Year Prize, and her English collection, Keeping Mum was shortlisted for the same prize. Both Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Gwyneth Lewis composed the words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, opened in 2004. In 2014 she dramatised her book-length poem A Hospital Odyssey for the BBC, broadcast on Radio 4's Afternoon Drama, and delivered her Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, published in Quantum Poetics (Bloodaxe Books, 2015). She lives in Cardiff.