The Leading Question - Softcover

Elkin, Roger

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798696331614

Publisher: Independently published, 2021

Synopsis

Prize-winning poet, Roger Elkin, was literary advisor to the Leek Arts Festival for whom he organized an International Poetry Competition (1982-1992); the co-Editor (1985-1988) of Prospice, the international literary quarterly, issues 17-25 inclusive; and sole Editor (1991-2006), of Envoi, poetry magazine, issues 101-145 inclusive. He has reviewed for Stand, Outposts, and Envoi; and his critical articles on Ted Hughes’s Recklings poems have appeared in collections of essays edited by Keith Sagar, These poems are part of an extensive sequence entitled That F Word which explores aspects of the Great Irish Famine (1845-51) including the arrival of blight, pestilence, evictions, forced emigration, and coffin ships. The sequence grew out of a visit by Roger Elkin to the Co Roscommon Mahon/Hartland Estate of Strokestown Park House, home to the Irish National Famine Museum. Several of these selected poems in 'The Leading Question' put events into a wider context linking with more recent famine, genocide and holocaust; and probing a variety of moral, aesthetic, philosophical and political issues, primarily pivoting on the reliability of historical truth and artistic integrity, and asking whether the events were concerned with Class warfare? Colonial despoilment? Anglo-Irish divide? Religious bigotry? Governmental-directed genocide? Social Darwinism? Economic mismanagement? Ecological disaster?Several poems have won prizes in Open Poetry Competitions. Don Paterson, introducing a sample of these poems in publication, writes “Roger Elkin’s poems burst with sharply observed and well-chosen detail, and are simply very interesting

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798696331614
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 116