{"title":"Books by Alice Oswald","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780571259335","title":"Dart","description":"Over the past three years Alice Oswald has been recording conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, she creates a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea. The voices are wonderfully varied and idiomatic - they include a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers and canoeists - and are interlinked with historic and mythic voices: drowned voices, dreaming voices and marginal notes which act as markers along the way.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57688249926005,"sku":"9780571214105","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":43201791230130,"sku":"9780571259335","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571214105_ab1fabeb-d6bf-414a-9301-64e3bcc3a1d4.jpg?v=1792686207"},{"product_id":"9780571274185","title":"Memorial","description":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew Arnold praised the \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e  for its 'nobility', as has everyone ever since -- but ancient critics  praised it for its \u003ci\u003eenargeia\u003c\/i\u003e, its 'bright unbearable reality' (the  word used when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves).  To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story,  and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the  brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more  than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and  unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The \u003ci\u003eIliad\u003c\/i\u003e  is an oral poem. This translation presents it as an attempt - in the  aftermath of the Trojan War - to remember people's names and lives  without the use of writing. I hope it will have its own coherence as a  series of memories and similes laid side by side: an antiphonal account  of man in his world... compatible with the spirit of oral poetry, which  was never stable but always adapting itself to a new audience, as if its  language, unlike written language, was still alive and kicking.' \u003cbr\u003e-  Alice Oswald\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201805516978,"sku":"9780571274185","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571274185_4f238e18-022b-4fd7-a374-57dd70942949.jpg?v=1786014136"},{"product_id":"9780571233786","title":"Woods etc.","description":"Woods etc. is Alice Oswald's third collection of poems, and follows the success of her widely acclaimed river-poem Dart, which was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002. Extending the concerns of Dart and written over a period of several years, these poems combine abrupt honesty with an exuberant rhetorical confidence, at times recalling the oral and anonymous tradition with which they share such affinity.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204031447218,"sku":"9780571233786","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571233786.jpg?v=1786013824"},{"product_id":"9780393355970","title":"A Sleepwalk on the Severn","description":"A Sleepwalk on the Severn is a reflective, book-length poem in several registers, using dramatic dialogue. Ghostly, meditative, and characterized by Alice Oswald's signature sensitivity to nature, the poem chronicles a night on the Severn Estuary as the moonrise travels through its five stages: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon, and moon reborn.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55897303482741,"sku":"9780393355970","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780393355970_ffc82f42-bca8-435d-9752-2169daba94b9.jpg?v=1787039827"},{"product_id":"9780571236947","title":"The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile","description":"\u003cp\u003ePOETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile\u003c\/i\u003e, Alice Oswald's first collection of poems, announced the arrival of a distinctive new voice. Shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the book introduced readers to her meditative, intensely musical style, and her breath-taking gift for visionary writing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The poetry of Alice Oswald arrives like a zephyr . . . a fresh and exciting first collection.' Kathleen Jamie, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'an inspired debut of lightly-worn wisdom and verbal panache.' John Fuller\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Alice Oswald throws the windows of the imagination open; she places a fingertip on the pulse of tradition, and proves it is still very much alive.' \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56291692708213,"sku":"9780571236947","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571236947_98418d86-69d8-471e-aa50-58d4995d712d.jpg?v=1786013872"},{"product_id":"9780571247561","title":"A Sleepwalk on the Severn","description":"\u003cp\u003e'This is not a play. This is a poem in several registers, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead, all based on real people from the Severn catchment, talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. The poem, which was written for the 2009 festival of the Severn, aims to record what happens when the moon moves over us - its effect on water and its effect on voices.'\u003cbr\u003eAlice Oswald\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Sleepwalk on the Severn\u003c\/i\u003e is a poem for several voices, set at night on the Severn Estuary. Its subject is moonrise, which happens five times in five different forms: new moon, half moon, full moon, no moon and moon reborn. Various characters, some living, some dead - all based on real people from the Severn catchment - talk towards the moment of moonrise and are changed by it. Commissioned for the 2009 festival of the Severn, Alice Oswald's breathtakingly original new work aims to record what happens when the moon moves over the sublunary world: its effect on water and its effect on language.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292530258293,"sku":"9780571247561","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780571247561_62897dfa-c9b5-4874-a659-949dc22fc4ce.jpg?v=1786013987"},{"product_id":"9781787331969","title":"Nobody","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e**WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2019**\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Alice Oswald is at the height of her powers in...this electrifying new work' \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   This is a book-length poem - a collage of water-stories, taken mostly from the \u003ci\u003eOdyssey\u003c\/i\u003e - about a minor character, abandoned on a stony island. It is not a translation, though, but a close inspection of the sea that surrounds him. There are several voices in the poem but no proper names, although its presiding spirit is Proteus, the shape-shifting sea-god. We recognise other mythical characters - Helios, Icarus, Alcyone, Philoctetes, Calypso, Clytemnestra, Orpheus, Poseidon, Hermes - who drift in and out of the poem, surfacing briefly before disappearing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReading \u003ci\u003eNobody\u003c\/i\u003e is like watching the ocean: a destabilising experience that becomes mesmeric, almost hallucinatory, as we slip our earthly moorings and follow the circling shoal of sea voices into a mesh of sound and light and water - fluid, abstract, and moving with the wash of waves. As with all of Alice Oswald's work, this is poetry that is made for the human voice, but this poem takes on the qualities of another element: dense, muscular and liquid.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eone person has the character of dust\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eanother has an arrow for a soul\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ebut their sto ries all end\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003esomewhere\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ein the sea\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    \u003cb\u003e'An invigorating book-length poem' Sara Wheeler\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305672421749,"sku":"9781787331969","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787331969_407125b0-42cf-4e91-a274-c7537f553adf.jpg?v=1786025738"},{"product_id":"9781910702437","title":"Falling Awake","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the 2017 Griffin Prize\u003cbr\u003eWinner of the 2016 Costa Poetry Award\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2016 T. S. Eliot Award\u003cbr\u003eShortlisted for the 2016 Forward Prize\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eGuardian \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eHerald \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eSunday Times \u003c\/i\u003e\/ \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement \u003c\/i\u003eBook of the Year\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlice Oswald’s poems are always vivid and distinct, alert and deeply, \u003ci\u003ephysically\u003c\/i\u003e, engaged in the natural world. Mutability – a sense that all matter is unstable in the face of mortality – is at the heart of this new collection and each poem is involved in that drama: the held tension that is embodied life, and life’s losing struggle with the gravity of nature.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWorking as before with an ear to the oral tradition, these poems attend to the organic shapes and sounds and momentum of the language as it’s spoken as well as how it’s thought: fresh, fluid and propulsive, but also fragmentary, repetitive. These are poems that are written to be read aloud.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOrpheus and Tithonus appear at the beginning and end of this book, alive in an English landscape, stuck in the clockwork of their own speech, and the Hours – goddesses of the seasons and the natural apportioning of Time – are the presiding figures. The persistent conditions are flux and falling, and the lines are in constant motion: approaching, from daring new angles, our experience of being human, and coalescing into poems of simple, stunning beauty.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56309172863349,"sku":"9781910702437","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781910702437_b82cdb20-8fa7-460d-bf1a-26979e63c1b5.jpg?v=1786028997"},{"product_id":"rhapsody-1","title":"Rhapsody","description":"'This book is a living, guiding, singing thing... I will cherish it and revisit it as long as I live' Max Porter'One of the finest living poets writing in English' Raymond AntrobusA daring, genre-defying work of non-fiction from one of our greatest poetsAlice Oswald goes in search of poetry in its original, wildest form – before it was written down, before it belonged to a single voice – and finds it still speaking all around us.   What begins as an attempt to ‘interview’ Homer becomes a thrilling exploration of an anonymous tradition that exists beyond authorship, spanning a world of singers, storytellers, mourners and listeners, of nightingales, grasshoppers and rivers.   Zigzagging through ballads, riddles, pibrochs, drama, interviews, artificial intelligence and sonnets, Rhapsody is a restless, miraculous exploration of poetry in its most vital form, and a resounding manifesto for the oral tradition.   At once intimate and expansive, Oswald invites us to listen to the voices that shape us, and to recognise poetry not as a solitary, written art, but as a communal, essential human inheritance.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57507633398133,"sku":"9781787332218","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781787332218.jpg?v=1787042642"},{"product_id":"rhapsody-2","title":"Rhapsody","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlice Oswald goes in search of poetry in its original, wildest form-before it was written down, before it belonged to a single voice-and finds it still speaking all around us. \"I'm looking for the voice of poetry before it knows it is poetry, when it is still improvising itself out of human emergency and memory and the song of the seed-sower and the bone violin. . . . The word poetry is not wild enough to hold them all,\" she writes. What begins as an attempt to \"interview\" Homer becomes a wide-ranging exploration of an anonymous tradition that exists beyond authorship, spanning a world of singers, storytellers, mourners, and listeners, of nightingales, grasshoppers, and rivers. Zigzagging through ballads, riddles, pibrochs, drama, interviews, artificial intelligence, and sonnets, \u003cem\u003eRhapsody\u003c\/em\u003e is a restless, miraculous exploration of poetry in its most vital form, and a resounding manifesto for the oral tradition. At once intimate and expansive, Oswald invites us to listen to the voices that shape us, and to recognize poetry not as a solitary, written art, but as a communal, essential human inheritance.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57555413172597,"sku":"9781324005957","price":19.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-alice-oswald.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}