The great work of Welsh literature, translated in full for the first time in over 100 years by two of its country's foremost poets
Tennyson portrayed him, and wrote at least one poem under his name. Robert Graves was fascinated by what he saw as his work's connection to a lost world of deeply buried folkloric memory. He is a shapeshifter; a seer; a chronicler of battles fought, by sword and with magic, between the ancient kingdoms of the British Isles; a bridge between old Welsh mythologies and the new Christian theology; a 6th-century Brythonic bard; and a legendary collective project spanning the centuries up to The Book of Taliesin's compilation in 14th-century North Wales. He is, above all, no single 'he'.
The figure of Taliesin is a mystery. But of the variety and quality of the poems written under his sign, of their power as exemplars of the force of ecstatic poetic imagination, and of the fascinating window they offer us onto a strange and visionary world, there can be no question. In the first volume to gather all of the poems from The Book of Taliesin since 1915, Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams's accessible translation makes these outrageous, arrogant, stumbling and joyful poems available to a new generation of readers.
- ISBN10 0241381134
- ISBN13 9780241381137
- Publish Date 27 August 2019 (first published 27 June 2019)
- Publish Status Out of Stock
- Out of Print 4 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Penguin UK
- Imprint Penguin Classic
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 321
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/isbn/9780241381137