David Constantine Readings

David Constantine Readings

 
‘Above all, David Constantine is a “humane” poet – a word often used in connection with his work, as if in noticing and detailing the ways of the world he is doing so on behalf of all that is best in us. For over forty years he has shaped a body of work that stands in comparison with that of any of his contemporaries, not just at home but internationally, navigating and negotiating that space between everyday events and their metaphysical or spiritual “otherness”.’ – Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, on behalf of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry Committee
 
 
Poet and translator David Constantine's new translation A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology was published by Bloodaxe in November 2024. Scroll down for details of his online launch reading on 8 November - available to watch live or later via YouTube.

The Greek Anthology, marvellous salvage from the vast shipwreck of the Ancient World, is a collection of around 4500 poems composed over more than 1500 years by about 300 authors, a colossal continuity and variety from pre-classical times through Roman into Byzantine. For A Bird Called Elaeus – his small anthology of the vast original – David Constantine has gone not just to the renowned love poems but also to poems that treat man’s dealings with the earth, his work and trades there, the creatures other than himself who inhabit it and the divinities whose care it is.

A Bird Called Elaeus is David Constantine’s seventh translation from Bloodaxe, following three editions of Friedrich Hölderlin, and collections by Henri Michaux, Philippe Jaccottet and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, including two books for which he received the European Poetry Translation Prize and the Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation.

David Constantine was one of the first poets to be published by Bloodaxe, making his debut in 1980 with A Brightness to Cast Shadows, just two years after the press was founded. His Collected Poems (2004) was followed by three later collections: Nine Fathom Deep (2009), Elder (2014), and his eleventh collection, Belongings, in October 2020. Two months later he was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2020.
 
The Poetry Medal Committee recommended David Constantine as the recipient of the Medal on the basis of his eleven books of poetry, in particular his Collected Poems, published in 2004, which spans three decades of his work. The Committee was chaired by UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, who himself received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry for 2018. Full story here.
 
Feature in The Guardian here. Alison Flood spoke to both David Constantine and to his poetry publisher of 40 years, Neil Astley of Bloodaxe Books.
 
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An interview with David Constantine about his translation A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology was featured in the Morning Star of 3 December 2024.  Read online here.
 

PAST EVENTS AND VIDEOS

 

Bloodaxe joint online launch event, Friday 8 November 2024, 7pm GMT

David Constantine joined Marie Howe and Philip Gross as all three poets read from their new books and discussed their work with each other and with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.

Available to watch via the video below or on our YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/live/lEW5RAH5R-g

 

David Constantine reads from A Bird Called Elaeus

David Constantine introduces and reads from A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology, his selection of poems from The Greek Anthology. Neil Astley filmed him at his home in Oxford in May 2023 ahead of the book's publication in 2024.

 

LAUNCH EVENT FOR BELONGINGS

17 November 2020, Joint Bloodaxe live-streamed launch event

David Constantine, Kerry Hardie and W.N. (Bill) Herbert launched their new poetry collections on 17 November 2020.

Hosted by editor Neil Astley from his home in Northumberland, this event was streamed live through the Bloodaxe Books YouTube channel on Tuesday 17th November.  Wonderful readings by all three poets were followed by discussion and a Q&A with the online audience.

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As well as a poet, David Constantine is a renowned translator.  Below is a film of David reading two poems from his 2018 expanded edition of Friedrich Hölderlin.

 

David Constantine on Friedrich Hölderlin

Constantine introduces Hölderlin and his poetry, discussing how translating Greek poetry (at first Pindar) helped Hölderlin evolve his own way of writing in German. Like Beethoven, Hölderlin was inspired by the French Revolution before it went wrong, and Constantine discusses the relevance also of Hölderlin to the times we live in, most particularly when there has been renewed interest in his work, such as during both world wars and during the period of social revolt in Germany in the 1960s. Constantine reads two poems from his edition of Hölderlin's Selected Poetry, ‘Once there were gods…’ (‘Götter wandelten einst…’), written in the spring of 1799 (but not published until 1909), and ‘The sun goes down’ (‘Geh unter, schöne Sonne…’), written some time before May 1800 but not published until 1846, three years after his death.


 


[04 December 2024]


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