Boudicca & Co. (Salt Modern Poets Series) - Softcover

Holland, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844712893 ISBN 13: 9781844712892

Publisher: Salt Pub, 2006

Synopsis

Sensual and politically engaged, "Boudicca & Co.". drives narrative poetry in new feminist directions. It creates a cast of strong provocative female characters with complex agendas, centred around a controversial sequence of poems in the voice of Boudicca. A collection with a powerful sense of place and purpose.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Holland is a poet, novelist and critic born in Essex, England. Daughter of the bestselling novelist Charlotte Lamb, she won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors for her poetry in 1996. Her first collection, The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman, was published by Bloodaxe in 1997. A commercial novel, Kissing the Pink (Sceptre), followed in 1999. Her second collection of poetry Boudicca & Co. was published by Salt in 2006, with a third collection, Camper Van Blues, in 2008.

Jane Holland has been editor of the British arts journal Horizon Review, and a fiction edition at Embrace Books. She now lives in Warwickshire with her husband and five children, where she was Warwick Poet Laureate for 2007-08, and also writes fiction under the name Victoria Lamb.

Review

In the process of dismantling the Boudicca myth, then, Holland has opened up new avenues for the possiblity of an engaged and visceral war poetry written by non-combatants, which evades the pitfalls of much protest poetry - we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets. -- Simon Turner * Gists and Piths * In her unconventional aspect, Boudicca is peculiarly modern, and there are moments in the sequence, where modern wars and conflicts appear to be invading the ancient story. In ''Last Stand'', the woods are ''thick / with sniper fire'' and Romans beat the men with ''rifle butts''. By breaking with the historic period of the tale, Holland comments on the repetition of atrocities and war, as if Boudicca is looking forward to the suffering and dehumanisation of twentieth-century wars. -- Zoe Brigley * English Studies * In the process of dismantling the Boudicca myth, then, Holland has opened up new avenues for the possiblity of an engaged and visceral war poetry written by non-combatants, which evades the pitfalls of much protest poetry - we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets. -- Simon Turner * Gists and Piths * In her unconventional aspect, Boudicca is peculiarly modern, and there are moments in the sequence, where modern wars and conflicts appear to be invading the ancient story. In ''Last Stand'', the woods are ''thick / with sniper fire'' and Romans beat the men with ''rifle butts''. By breaking with the historic period of the tale, Holland comments on the repetition of atrocities and war, as if Boudicca is looking forward to the suffering and dehumanisation of twentieth-century wars. -- Zoe Brigley * English Studies * Jane Holland's route into poetry was the unusual one of snooker, in which she was briefly a professional ... Snooker is actually a good metaphor for poetry: angling off the cush is like setting up a rhyme scheme, full rhymes give off a satisfying clack ... -- Peter Forbes Jane Holland discovered, more or less by chance, a passion and a talent for snooker. She entered a man's world where the battle to overcome bigoted rules and attitudes was as great as the battle to perfect her own skills in the field. She has turned her formidable energies and skills to poetry now with similarly turbulent and successful results. -- Maura Dooley

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt Pub
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1844712893
• ISBN 13: 9781844712892
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 82