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Dictator Philip Terry

Dictator By Philip Terry

Dictator by Philip Terry


$22.49
Condition - Very Good
Only 1 left

Summary

Dictator/Gilgamesh is the most risky and compelling project to date by the great re-inventor of poems.

Dictator Summary

Dictator by Philip Terry

Dictator recreates Gilgamesh using the 1,500-word vocabulary of Globish, put together by Jean-Paul Nerriere. Globish is a business language, appropriate to translate cuneiform which emerged from the need to record business transactions. Nerriere considered it the world dialect of the third millenium; likewise Akkadian, the language of Gilgamesh, was the lingua franca of communications in the Near East. This link between script, language and business is there in the substance of the poem. An underpinning theme involving trade, here trade in hard wood and access to forests for building materials, links the poem to recent wars in and around Iraq, where the contemporary commodity is oil. This in turn links the poem to related issues such as migration and the refugee crisis. Working with refugees in Palermo in 2017, Terry was involved with putting on a puppet version of Gilgamesh where the children related viscerally to the story, particularly the boat scenes.

Dictator Reviews

`Philip Terry treats the tablets like elements of code to be cracked open for contemporary eyes and ears. [His] version is original and powerful; he does not try to mend the fragments into a legible whole, but remembers the poem's shattered state.' - Marina Warner

About Philip Terry

Philip Terry was born in Belfast and has taught at the universities of Caen, Plymouth and Essex, where he is currently Director of the Centre for Creative Writing. His books include the anthology of short stories, Ovid Metamorphosed (2000), the poetry collections Oulipoems (2006), Oulipoems 2 (2009) and Shakespeare's Sonnets (2011), and the novel tapestry (2013), which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. He is the translator of Raymond Queneau's Elementary Morality (2007), and Georges Perec's I Remember (2014). Dante's Inferno, which relocates Dante's poem to current-day Essex, was published in 2014 and was an Independent poetry title of the year.

Additional information

GOR009658786
9781784106188
1784106186
Dictator by Philip Terry
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Carcanet Press Ltd
2018-10-25
176
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - Dictator