Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
Telling Tales
Telling Tales
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Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description
Casgliad unigryw y bardd arobryn Patience Agbabi wrth iddi ailadrodd holl straeon y Canterbury Tales gan Chaucer.
Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description
Award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's collection is utterly unique.
Manylion y cynnyrch / Product details
- ISBN 13
- 9781782111573
- Gwales Code
- gwales.com.9781782111573
- Gwerthwr / Vendor
- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru
- Long Title
- Telling Tales
- Awdur / Author
- Agbabi, Patience
- Current Price ex VAT
- £9.99
- Current Price inc VAT
- £9.99
- Availability Status (EN)
- Non-Stock Item - Ordered on request
- Availability Status (CY)
- Archebir yn ôl y galw
- Dyddiad cyhoeddi / Publication Date
- 2015-04-20
- Cyhoeddwr / Publisher
- Canongate Books
- Media Type (EN)
- Paperback / softback
- Media Type (CY)
- Clawr meddal
- Pages
- 134 pages
- Size
- 1 × 1 mm
- Language Code
- English
- Categori / Category
- CY: Barddoniaeth (yn Saesneg) | EN: Poetry (in English)
Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review
The opening poem in Telling Tales describes the book as a ‘remix’ of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and, in her acknowledgements, Agbabi thanks Chaucer ‘for creating a literary work that defies time and space’, thus providing her with a flexible, pre-existing framework to say something that matters to us today. This kind of ‘updating’ can be risky – will the new work stand alone, on its own merits, or is it dependent on a reader having knowledge of the original in order to fully understand what is being presented to them? The book seems to work well for both the Chaucer fan and the newbie, as demonstrated by the helpful contents list. Each tale has a new title which is followed by the original and the name of Agbabi’s character who now speaks it, as this example demonstrates: What Do Women Like Bes’? (The Wife of Bath’s Tale) Mrs Alice Ebi Bafa. Mrs Bafa and the other ‘pilgrims’ find themselves on a Routemaster bus travelling from the Old Kent Road to Canterbury, jostling to share their stories. The book cracks along at a breakneck pace, generated in part by the rich mix of forms Agbabi uses: both old and new, including sonnet crowns, rap battles, tweet-length stanzas written in text-speak, and Chaucer’s own rime royal. Occasionally an end-rhyme can feel a little forced, and some lines are rather flat, as in this example from ‘Arse Dramatica (The Summoner’s Tale)’, in which con men try to swindle a ‘charitable donation’ from a canny old man: ‘Plonks the form on the eiderdown, / Have a butcher’s at this. Come on, / sign your name in neon! / Thomas smiles, Alright, I’m smitten / but you know I don’t do nothin’ written. ’ Taken as a whole the book offers an impressive range of formal poetry, and Agbabi clearly isn’t afraid to take risks. The reader is plunged headlong from one poetic form to another, from voice to voice, from Ghana to Cardiff to Lagos to Denmark. The speakers’ concerns mirror those of Chaucer’s pilgrims (greed, betrayal, retribution) but are firmly rooted in our own world. A child victim of knife crime speaks to his mother from Heaven. A violent criminal sells copies of his autobiography to eager readers. The credit crunch, ASBOs and Chavs all feature, but so do archetypal figures such as the Devil and the seven deadly sins, and a number of tales involve the allegorical folktale elements of their originals. These sometimes jar with the very modern insistence of the majority of the stories, and the endings of these tales can be a little anti-climactic. The collection closes with each speaker’s ‘autobiography’, akin to Chaucer’s prologues which appear at the start of some of his tales. Agbabi’s versions are very inventive and witty. They give the speakers the ring of authenticity, and make sharp comments on contemporary poetry culture and publishing. ‘Contemporary’ is the word that seems to best describe Telling Tales , yet there’s a great deal of fun to be had in seeing how these very modern tales speak to their Middle English progenitors.
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