Saint Billie - Softcover

Reed, Jeremy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900564629 ISBN 13: 9781900564625

Publisher: Enitharmon Press, 2001

Synopsis

Jeremy Reed's new collection centres on the legendary figure of the jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-59), 'Lady Day', whose talent propelled her from poverty in Baltimore to fame as a vocalist in Harlem nightclubs and international celebrity through her recordings with Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. But her life was scarred by personal tragedy and by the drug addiction that led to her premature death. From this dramatic material Reed creates a highly charged series of poems and prose pieces, some spoken by Billie herself, some by the poet as narrator, which brilliantly illuminate the singer's world and the heady atmosphere of the jazz age.

About this title

About the Author:

Jeremy Reed was born in Jersey, Channel Islands, and read for his PhD at the University of Essex. He is widely acknowledged as the most imaginatively gifted British poet of his generation, praised by Seamus Heaney for his 'rich and careful writing' and by David Lodge for his remarkable lyric gift’. Björk simply called his work the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world’. His Selected Poems were published by Penguin in 1987. Subsequent collections have been Nineties (Cape, 1990), Dicing for Pearls (1990), Pop Stars (1994), Sweet Sister Lyric (1996), Saint Billie (2001), Duck and Sally Inside (2004) and This is How You Disappear (2007), all from Enitharmon Press. He has also published Heartbreak Hotel (Orion, 2002), a verse biography of Elvis Presley. Jeremy Reed is currently Marine Society Poet Laureate.

Review:

'A supreme word-musician.' Adrian Mitchell'Brilliant unquiet mobilityA...subtle verbal intelligence, flashing with imaginative wit at once vivid and curiously cerebral.' Terry Eagleton'[He is] a supreme word-musician.' Adrian Mitchell'Brilliant unquiet mobilityA...subtle verbal intelligence, flashing with imaginative wit at once vivid and curiously cerebral.' Terry Eagleton'A...rich and careful writing, dense with pleasure in words that pleasure the world and waken us to its lovely surprises.' Seamus Heaney

About this edition

• Publisher: Enitharmon Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1900564629
• ISBN 13: 9781900564625
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80