Hold Your Own
Gedichte
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- 17,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
Tempest sei mehr als modern, sondern praktisch Science-Fiction, schreibt der Guardian. Zu den literarischen und musikalischen Einflüssen zählen James Joyce und Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy und Virginia Woolf. Tempest beherrscht den innigen Volksliedton ebenso wie Londons Straßenslang, wandelt virtuos zwischen lyrischer Tradition und Hip-Hop. Die Gedichte in Hold Your Own bemächtigen sich auf radikal heutige, politische Weise des antiken Mythos von Teiresias, einer zweigeschlechtlichen Figur, von den Göttern geblendet und prophetisch begabt. In vier Teilen folgt der Zyklus dem Kind, dem Jüngling, der Frau und dem Mann, vermittelt eindrucksvoll, wie es ist, alt zu werden und »sehend«, dazu verurteilt, unserer neoliberalen Gesellschaft die Wahrheit zu sagen – und keiner hört zu.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Britain, Tempest is a front-page phenomenon: the rapper, performance poet, and playwright has picked up attention and honors such as a Mercury Award nomination and a commission from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her debut poetry collection reveals an earnest writer of strong declarations, clear anecdotes, and inspiring slogans, but also some clich s. Much of the book revolves around a modern Tiresias, a mythic figure who grows up a boy, becomes a woman, and then becomes a man, experiencing and commenting on our highly gendered lives along the way: "Because the boy will grow up/ makes him no less innocent." In a love poem, she writes, "I feel you feeling me move... I lay in the dark and listened to the rain./ Drank the night in breathless mouthfuls." Tiresias, in the opening poem, decides that "True love takes its toll/ On souls/ Who are not used to feeling whole." Tempest often writes about, and for, teenagers; she could get a lot of attention here through her appeal to young readers, or through the power of her live delivery. Though some British performers translate beautifully and almost completely to the printed page, the evidence here is that Tempest may not be one of them.
