The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen
(Hardback, Main)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen
By (Author) Gillian Clarke
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
5th January 2022
Main
United Kingdom
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
Classic poetry / poems
Translation and language interpretation
821.914
Physical Properties
Hardback
200
Width 146mm, Height 224mm, Spine 20mm
365g
Description
The timeless and compelling 'word-music' of one of Britain's oldest cultural treasures is captured in this new bilingual edition.
The Gododdin charts the rise and fall of 363 warriors in the battle of Catraeth, around the year AD 600. The men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin rose to unite the Welsh and the Picts against the Angles, only to meet a devastating fate. Composed by the poet Aneirin, the poem was originally orally transmitted as a sung elegy, passed down for seven centuries before being written down in early Welsh by two medieval scribes. It is composed of one hundred laments to the named characters who fell, and follows a sophisticated alliterative poetics.
Former National Poet of Wales Gillian Clarke animates this historical epic with a modern musicality, making it live in the language of today and underscoring that, in a world still beset by the misery of war, Aneirin's lamentation is not done.
Reviews
"Y Gododdin is extremely readable, not a long narrative route march but a mosaic of elegies and eulogies to the fallen." -- Carol Rumens, Guardian
"Gillian Clarke's version of this seminal, original spoken word poem is a scrupulous and beautiful rendition of a glory of Britain and a European marvel. In it, she crowns her life's work as a loving bridge between the two languages of Welsh and English, balancing the music of both. A triumph." -- Carol Ann Duffy
Author Bio
Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff, Wales. National Poet of Wales 2008-2016, winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (2010) and the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award (2012), she is one of the best-known names in UK poetry today, as well as one of the most popular poets on the school curriculum. Poet, playwright, editor, translator, she is President of Ty Newydd writers' centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Her collections include Ice (2012) and Zoology (2017); her Selected Poems appeared in 2016.
