Bedouin of the London Evening
Bloodaxe Books Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-78037-361-4 (ISBN)
The "disappearance" of the poet Rosemary Tonks in the 1970s was one of the literary world's most tantalising mysteries - the subject of a BBC feature in 2009 called The Poet Who Vanished.After publishing two extraordinary poetry collections - and six satirical novels - she turned her back on the literary world after a series of personal tragedies and medical crises which made her question the value of literature and embark on a restless, self-torturing spiritual quest. This involved totally renouncing poetry, and suppressing her own books.Interviewed earlier in 1967, she spoke of her direct literary forebears as Baudelaire and Rimbaud: 'They were both poets of the modern metropolis as we know it and no one has bothered to learn what there is to be learned from them...The main duty of the poet is to excite - to send the senses reeling.'Her poetry - published in Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms (1963) and Iliad of Broken Sentences (1967) - is exuberantly sensuous, a hymn to sixties hedonism set amid the bohemian nighttime world of a London reinvented through French poetic influences and sultry Oriental imagery. She was 'Bedouin of the London evening' in one poem: 'I have been young too long, and in a dressing-gown / My private modern life has gone to waste.'All her published poetry is now available here for the first time in over 40 years, along with a selection of her prose. This second edition has an expanded introduction and an additional prose piece.
Rosemary Tonks (1928-2014) was a colourful figure in the London literary scene during the 1960s. She published two poetry collections, Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms (Putnam, 1963) and Iliad of Broken Sentences (The Bodley Head, 1967), and six novels, from Opium Fogs (1963) to The Halt During the Chase (1972), wrote for The Observer, The Times, The New York Review of Books, The Listener, The New Statesman and Encounter, and presented poetry programmes for the BBC.Following the death of her mother, a crisis of religious faith, her divorce and nearly losing her sight, she renounced literature, suppressed her own books, left London for Bournemouth and cut herself off from family and friends. After travelling to Jerusalem in 1981 to be baptised by the River Jordan, she created a new identity for herself, her whereabouts known only to family. Thought to be living somewhere as a recluse, she was in fact continuing to inhabit cafes and parks, and was active as a silent, often solitary evangelist working outside any church, giving out Bibles in London and Bournemouth. In 2009 she was the subject of Brian Patten's BBC radio documentary The Poet Who Vanished. All her published poetry was made available for the first time in over 40 years in Bedouin of the London Evening: Collected Poems, published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2014. This edition also includes a small selection of her prose. A second edition with an expanded introduction and an additional prose piece was issued in 2016.
9 Introduction by Neil AstleyNotes on Cafes and Bedrooms (1963) 45 Love Territory 46 Running Away 49 20th Century Invalid 50 Diary of a Rebel 51 Bedroom in an Old City 54 The Flaneur and the Apocalypse 55 Fear's Blindworm 56 The Solitary's Bedroom 57 Rainfield and Argument 58 Gutter Lord 60 Poet and Iceberg 61 Oath 62 Ace of Hooligans 65 Rome 66 Hypnos and Warm Winters 67 Escape! 68 Story of a Hotel Room 69 Bedouin of the London Evening 70 Boy in the Lane 72 Fog Peacocks 73 Poet as Gambler 74 Apprentice 76 Blouson Noir 77 Bedouin of the London Morning 78 April and the Ideas-Merchant 79 On the advantage of being ill-treated by the WorldIliad of Broken Sentences (1967) 85 The Sofas, Fogs, and Cinemas 87 The Sash Window 88 Epoch of the Hotel Corridor 89 Badly-chosen Lover 90 The Little Cardboard Suitcase 91 Hydromaniac 92 Students in Bertorelli's 93 The Desert Wind Elite 95 An Old-fashioned Traveller on the Trade Routes 96 The Ice-cream Boom Towns 97 Addiction to an Old Mattress 98 Song of the October Wind 100 Done for! 101 Orpheus in Soho 102 Dressing-gown Olympian 103 Farewell to Kurdistan 106 Black Kief and the Intellectual 107 The Drinkers of Coffee 108 To a Certain Young Man 110 A Few Sentences AwaySelected Prose 113 Note on Notes on Cafes and Bedrooms [1963] 115 Interview with Peter Orr [1963] 122 Cutting the Marble [1973] 132 The Wisdom of Colette [1974] 140 The Pick-up or L'Ercole d'Oro [1973] 157 On being down, but not quite out, in Paris [1976]
| Erscheinungsdatum | 03.06.2016 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | Tyne and Wear |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 138 x 216 mm |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Lyrik / Gedichte |
| ISBN-10 | 1-78037-361-9 / 1780373619 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-78037-361-4 / 9781780373614 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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