Following the success of her T. S. Eliot Prize-nominated Over and award-winning translation of the medieval Pearl, Jane Draycott returns with her fourth collection of poems, The Occupant. With a rhythmic subtlety and metrical poise that have become hallmarks of her verse, Draycott hints at the existence of a world of dreamlike clarity underneath our own. In the National Gallery a gardener cuts away the flower from a still-life canvas to replant in his own garden; in an abandoned sanatorium a grand piano dreams of the voices and music of days past, 'rose-spotted paintwork peeling softly, half-moon fanlights rising, sinking'. At the heart of these imagined scenes the long title poem, 'The Occupant', draws on scenes proposed but left unwritten in Martinus Nijhoff's Awater. In the stifling summer air, Draycott's occupant trawls the streets of an unnamed city whose 'dead lanes keep their silence', where 'the frail expire and pale dogs whimper', as its police post notices: 'Missing: Have you seen this wind?
The Kingdom of Jane Draycott's fifth collection is clearly a world we know, altered a little by Draycott's distinctive, prismatic lyricism, whose loving attention to place and our moment is skewed in a way that opens the world afresh. Here are England's towns and countryside, roads and ports and sushi chains, yards and herbs, an airport and a columbarium, and poems that consider art in a time of plague by way of meditation on Titian, Apollinaire and Derek Jarman.
Jane Draycott's translation of Pearl reissued as a Carcanet Classic A Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation In a dream landscape radiant with jewels, a father sees his lost daughter on the far bank of a river: 'my pearl, my girl'. One of the great treasures of the British Library, the fourteenth-century poem Pearl is a work of poetic brilliance; its account of loss and consolation has retained its force across six centuries. Jane Draycott in her new translation remakes the imaginative intensity of the original. This is, Bernard O'Donoghue says in his introduction, 'an event of great significance and excitement', an encounter between medieval tradition and an acclaimed modern poet.
Over, Jane Draycott's third book, takes its title from a sequence of twenty-six poems based on the international phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta... In these and other pieces Draycott creates a world of echoing voices and reflections. She evokes the mirrors and doorways, dreams and night-time journeys that transform the familiar: entrances into a different reality. Over explores liminal places where ocean meets land, land drops to ravine, lives intersect in piazzas. The poems cross thresholds between what is finished and what is 'not over yet', between present and past and, in an extract from her new translation of the medieval dream-vision Pearl, between a sunlit garden and the mysterious landscape of the world to come.
The first modern biography of one of the most influential yet long-neglected rulers of the ancient world: Cleopatra Selene, daughter of Antony and Cleopatra. “A vibrant, fascinating portrait of a great woman who deserves her place in the pantheon of Roman queens.” —Emma Southon As the only daughter of Roman Triumvir Marc Antony and Egyptian Queen Cleopatra VII, Cleopatra Selene was expected to uphold traditional feminine virtues; to marry well and bear sons; and to legitimize and strengthen her parents’ rule. Yet with their parents’ deaths by suicide, the princess and her brothers found themselves the inheritors of Egypt, a claim that placed them squarely in the warpath of the Roman emperor. “Supported by a feast of visual and literary references” (Caroline Lawrence), Cleopatra’s Daughter reimagines the life of Cleopatra Selene, a woman who, although born into Egyptian royalty and raised in her mother’s court, was cruelly abandoned and held captive by Augustus Caesar. Creating a narrative from frescos and coinage, ivory dolls and bronzes, historian and archaeologist Jane Draycott shows how Cleopatra Selene navigated years of imprisonment on Palatine Hill—where Octavia, the emperor’s sister and Antony’s fourth wife, housed royal children orphaned in the wake of Roman expansion—and emerged a queen. Despite the disrepute of her family, Cleopatra Selene in time endeared herself to her captors through her remarkable intellect and political acumen. Rather than put her to death, Augustus wed her to the Numidian prince Juba, son of the deposed regent Juba I, and installed them both as client rulers of Mauretania in Africa. There, Cleopatra Selene ruled successfully for nearly twenty years, promoting trade, fostering the arts, and reclaiming her mother’s legacy—all at a time, Draycott reminds us, when kingship was an inherently male activity. A princess who became a prisoner and a prisoner who became a queen, Cleopatra Selene here “finally attains her rightful place in history” (Barry Strauss). A much-needed corrective, Cleopatra’s Daughter sheds new and revelatory light on Egyptian and Roman politics, society, and culture in the early days of the Roman Empire.
Roman Domestic Medical Practice in Central Italy examines the roles that the home, the garden and the members of the household (freeborn, freed and slave) played in the acquisition and maintenance of good physical and mental health and well-being. Focussing on the period from the middle Republic to the early Empire, it considers how comprehensive the ancient Roman general understanding of health actually was, and studies how knowledge regarding various aspects of health was transmitted within the household. Using literary, documentary, archaeological and bioarchaeological evidence from a variety of contexts, this is the first extended volume to provide as comprehensive and detailed a reconstruction of this aspect of ancient Roman private life as possible, complementing existing works on ancient professional medical practice and existing works on domestic medical practice in later historical periods. This volume offers an indispensable resource to social historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient family, and medical historians, particularly those that focus on the ancient world.
In any 17th century English society, a woman like the celebrated Elizabeth Bennet is easily noticed and quick to be admired for her witty tongue and sparkling personality. Yet there are as many of the same sex who have a soft-spoken, humble temper; always looking to please though never explicitly expressing how they feelmuch like Elizabeths sister, Jane Bennet. Ann Ashton is one of such character and disposition, who, on the brink of adulthood, has suddenly been brought into contact again with her childhood friend, Mr. Hampton, whom she had loved in her youth. But the circumstances of their previous parting has made Ann weary of the gentleman, and it will take time and great patience on Hamptons part if he wishes her to open her heart to him once more.
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