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  The Poetry of Laurence Binyon

  Laurence Binyon

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  Robert Laurence Binyon, CH, was born on 10th August 1869 in Lancaster in Lancashire, England to Quaker parents, Frederick Binyon and Mary Dockray. 
  He studied at St Paul's School, London before enrolling at Trinity College, Oxford, to read classics. 
  Binyon’s first published work was Persephone in 1890.  As a poet, his output was not prodigious and, in the main, the volumes he did publish were slim, but his reputation was of the highest order. When the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, died in 1913, Binyon was considered alongside Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling for the post which was eventually given to Robert Bridges. 
  Binyon played a pivotal role in helping to establish the modernist School of poetry and introduced imagist poets such as Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) to East Asian visual art and literature. Most of his career was spent at The British Museum where he produced many books particularly on the art of the Far East. 
  Moved and shaken by the onset of the World War I and its military tactics of young men slaughtered to hold or gain a few yards of shell-shocked mud Binyon wrote his seminal poem For the Fallen. It became an instant classic, turning moments of great loss into a National and human tribute. 
  After the war, he returned to the British Museum and wrote numerous books on art; especially on William Blake, Persian and Japanese art. 
  In 1931, his two volume Collected Poems appeared and in 1933, he retired from the British Museum. 
  Between 1933 and 1943, Binyon published his acclaimed translation of Dante's Divine Comedy in an English version of terza rima. 
  During the Second World War Binyon wrote another poetic masterpiece 'The Burning of the Leaves', about the London Blitz. 
  Robert Laurence Binyon died in Dunedin Nursing Home, Bath Road, Reading, on March 10th, 1943 after undergoing an operation. 
   This volume comes to you from Portable Poetry, a specialized imprint from Deadtree Publishing.  Our range is large and growing and covers single poets, themes, and many compilations.

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  Short Poetry Collection 093

  Various Various

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  This is a collection of poems recorded by LibriVox volunteers for the month of December 2010.

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  Reinvention - Poems

  Rik Emmett

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  Poetry from beloved lead guitarist of the multi-platinum record selling legendary band Triumph
  		 
  Reinvention is a largely autobiographical collection of poetry — a project that followed on the heels of Rik Emmett retiring from a touring musician’s and college educator’s life in early 2019. Inside all of the slashes that define him — singer/songwriter/guitarist/rock star/teacher/columnist — writing has always been his strongest avocation, and the poetic style of “Ultra Talk,” in particular, offered a welcome spark for a songwriter’s freedom of expression. This creative license is organized under seven headings – The Humanities, Life & Death, There’s Politics in Everything, Double Helix, Soapbox Sermonettes, Time Time Time, and Ars Nova 2020. 
  		 
  Rik’s poetry (literally) reinvents his own retirement, and it’s not just some aging dilettante’s bucket list fancy. He discovered a sincere way to tie up a lot of loose ends, fulfill dormant promise, and eschew show biz tangents. Reinvention, his first book, makes some sense of a life that always went in a lot of different directions at once. Finally, he’s given himself permission to chase a mode of self-expression with less commercial potential … than jazz guitar recordings.

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  Honour (NHB Modern Plays)

  Joanna Murray-Smith

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  An unsettling play about infidelity seen from the perspective of the three women involved: the wife, the lover and the daughter.
  George and Honor have been happily married for thirty-two years. She is a successful writer, he is a revered columnist. They have a perfect understanding of each other. Until a pushy young female journalist - on an assignment to 'profile' George - quite deliberately seeks to undermine that understanding. The fallout is dreadful - but beautifully and convincingly portrayed in all its painful consequences.
  'Murray-Smith's considerable skill lies in charting the minute emotional shifts and the subtle power play between the four people... Superb' - Mail on Sunday
  'Murray-Smith's writing is searching and droll, naturalistic and poetically honed' - Independent on Sunday
  'An old story, but thanks to the quality of the writing and acting we share the characters' sense of sailing into uncharted waters... And there are some excellent comic touches... the piece deserves full credit for its honesty and dramatic grip' - Sunday Telegraph
  'It's an intelligent, powerful, gripping piece' - The Times
  'A really powerful new play. Joanna Murray-Smith is the most exciting Australian dramatist of her generation' - New Statesman

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  Finsbury Park (NHB Modern Plays)

  Stephen Jeffreys

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  Published here for the first time, Finsbury Park is a very likable, short autobiographical monologue, that was first performed as part of the Come to Where I'm From festival at the Park Theatre, London, in 2016.
  'I had the great pleasure of working with Stephen Jeffreys on his play, The Libertine. Would that all playwrights had his openness, his talent, his hard-headedness, his experience, his enthusiasm, his complexity, and perhaps best of all his talent and interest in eliciting the best in others' - John Malkovich
  'Stephen's plays always bear the kitemark of unique, handcrafted quality' - Ian Rickson

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  The Lay of the Nibelungs

  Anonymous Anonymous, Alice Horton

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  One of the finest German medieval epic poems, The Lay of the Nibelungs is perhaps best known now as one of the principal sources for Wagner's four-part music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. It is easy to see how Wagner was enthralled by the story and the poetry for the power of the tale drives the narrative: intense love, loyalty, jealousy, murder, duty, honour and massacre are all interwoven into a classic.Many of the figures known to us by Wagner's opera cycle are here: Alberich, Siegmund, Sieglind, Siegfried, Brunhilda, Gunther and Hagen, sometimes in familiar roles, sometimes very different from expectations. The tragedy is driven by the enmity between two women who were originally friends - Brunhilda, who becomes the wife of Gunther, and Kriemhilda, Siegfried's wife. A feud between the sisters-in-law leads to conflict and mayhem. Hagen has the dark persona which prompts him to commit treacherous murder, leading the protagonists to a final terrible end. Unlike the Wagnerian version (he drew in the main from the Volsung Saga version, but also made the saga his own), there is no interference from gods or giants, and apart from the appearance of the ‘hood of darkness', Tarnhelm, which confers mysterious powers on its wearer, there is little magic. But this does not lessen the immense power of The Lay of the Nibelungs, as it moves inexorably forward to its climactic conclusion. The structure of the poem is crucial to the drama of the telling. The anonymous poet established a form based on a steady four-line stanza with rhyming couplets. But the strength of it lies in the metre, three metrical feet, a caesura, and another three metrical feet, for the first three lines, adding an extra metrical foot for the last line for emphasis. This classic verse translation by Alice Horton, edited by Edward Bell and revised for this recording, is still regarded by scholars as perhaps the most faithful to the 13th century German original. Though modern prose versions are available, they do not have the poetic grandeur befitting such a tale, and Horton's verse is ideal for an audio recording. David Rintoul brings his decades of experience in classical theatre to bear in his stirring performance.

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