Jim Powell – författare

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, though tattered, have not faded."--Bernard Knox, The New Republic"Graceful, fluent, lucid while respectful of mystery: Jim Powell's unsurpassed embodiment of Sappho in English has all the conviction of art."--Robert PinskyThis new edition of The Poetry of Sappho translates all the surviving texts of Sappho that make consecutive poetic sense, including the newly discovered "Brothers Ode," "Cypris fragment," and other papyrus texts published in 2014. The translation is particularly intent on bringing over into English Sappho's formal mastery along with her sense. It includes summary discussions of Sappho's biography and the history of her texts, an essay on the formal character of her work and its tradition, and notes on the poems.

"The Sapphic impression of emotion poured out in unpremeditated speech is the product of sophisticated art. Such poetry confronts the translator with a formidable challenge.... Jim Powell is fully aware of the dangers, and speaks of the 'fluidity, ease, grace, and melodic variety' of Sappho's measures. Powell has tried to reproduce the effect. The resulting book is a brilliant success. Powell has shored her fragments against [Sappho's] ruins to give us a garland in which the flowers, though tattered, have not faded."--Bernard Knox, The New Republic"Graceful, fluent, lucid while respectful of mystery: Jim Powell's unsurpassed embodiment of Sappho in English has all the conviction of art."--Robert PinskyThis new edition of The Poetry of Sappho translates all the surviving texts of Sappho that make consecutive poetic sense, including the newly discovered "Brothers Ode," "Cypris fragment," and other papyrus texts published in 2014. The translation is particularly intent on bringing over into English Sappho's formal mastery along with her sense. It includes summary discussions of Sappho's biography and the history of her texts, an essay on the formal character of her work and its tradition, and notes on the poems.

Today, thousands of years after her birth, in lands remote from her native island of Lesbos and in languages that did not exist when she wrote her poetry in Aeolic Greek, Sappho remains an important name among lovers of poetry and poets alike,. Celebrated throughout antiquity as the supreme Greek poet of love and of the personal lyric, noted especially for her limpid fusion of formal poise, lucid insight, and incandescent passion, today her poetry is also prized for its uniquely vivid participation in a living paganism. Collected in an edition of nine scrolls by scholars in the second century BC, Sappho's poetry largely disappeared when the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204. All that remained was one poem and a handful of quoted passages . A century ago papyrus fragments recovered in Egypt added a half dozen important texts to Sappho's surviving works. In 2004 a new complete poem was deciphered and published. By far the most significant discovery in a hundred years, it offers a new and tellingly different example of Sappho's poetic art and reveals another side of the poet, thinking about aging and about the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Jim Powell's translations represent a unique combination of poetic mastery in English verse and a deep schlolarly engagement with Sappho's ancient Greek. They are incomparably faithful to the literal sense of the Greek poems and, simultaneously, to their forms, preserving the original meters and stanzas while exactly replicating the dramatic action of their sequences of disclosure and the passionate momentum of their sentences. Powell's translations have often been anthologized and selected for use in textbooks, winning recognition among discerning readers as far the best versions in English.

Today, thousands of years after her birth, in lands remote from her native island of Lesbos and in languages that did not exist when she wrote her poetry in Aeolic Greek, Sappho remains an important name among lovers of poetry and poets alike. Celebrated throughout antiquity as the supreme Greek poet of love and of the personal lyric, noted especially for her limpid fusion of formal poise, lucid insight, and incandescent passion, today her poetry is also prized for its uniquely vivid participation in a living paganism. Collected in an edition of nine scrolls by scholars in the second century BC, Sappho's poetry largely disappeared when the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204. All that remained was one poem and a handful of quoted passages. A century ago papyrus fragments recovered in Egypt added a half dozen important texts to Sappho's surviving works. In 2004 a new complete poem was deciphered and published. By far the most significant discovery in a hundred years, it offers a new and tellingly different example of Sappho's poetic art and reveals another side of the poet, thinking about aging and about the transmission of culture from one generation to the next. Jim Powell's translations represent a unique combination of poetic mastery in English verse and a deep schlolarly engagement with Sappho's ancient Greek. They are incomparably faithful to the literal sense of the Greek poems and, simultaneously, to their forms, preserving the original meters and stanzas while exactly replicating the dramatic action of their sequences of disclosure and the passionate momentum of their sentences. Powell's translations have often been anthologized and selected for use in textbooks, winning recognition among discerning readers as far the best versions in English.

This sophisticated first collection by Jim Powell synthesizes personal and world history to produce a compelling vision of the past, through verse letters to friends and relatives, translations of Horace, Propertius, Sappho, and others, and allusions to ancient figures of history and mythology."I find it difficult to overpraise the ease of this writing, which in one act combines succinct physical presentation and explanation of it. . . . It is perhaps here that Jim Powell, not yet forty, most shows his superiority to many of his contemporaries and seniors.  He not only understands the way in which opposites are necessary to one another, he achieves his knowledge in the poem, and so we grasp it as we read. . . . he has tapped a subject matter that is endless and important, and by the thoroughgoingness and the subtlety of his exploration shows he has the power to do almost anything."—Thom Gunn, Shelf Life "His title burns away everywhere in the volume, in the fevers of eros, divination, memory, destruction, and grief. . . . Page for page, there is more sheer fine, clear, yet syntactically subtle and metaphorically gorgeous writing in Powell than I have seen in some time."—Mary Kinzie, Poetry"Jim Powell's poems, like those of Thomas Hardy, are haunted forms, full of ghosts and mocking gods, shadows and foreshadowings. But Powell is a Hardy whose poems we've never read, a Hardy with his hand in the blaze, not stirring the ash in a cold and wind-torn grate."—Jennifer Clarvoe, The Threepenny Review

'With his gallows humour and observational wit, Jim Powell gives us a vivid portrait of a man in meltdown.' Daily MailWhen I was small, my mother showed me how to grow a carrot from a carrot. She filled a jam jar with water, cut the top off a carrot, ran a cocktail stick horizontally through the stub and suspended it over the jar, just touching the water. In time, roots sprouted, and when they were long enough and strong enough, the plant was translated to the garden and new carrots grew. This was one of the many exciting ways in which I was prepared for adult life.This is Matthew Oxenhay at sixty: a stranger to his wife, an embarrassment to his children, and failed former contender for the top job at his City firm. Seizing on his birthday party as an opportunity to deliver some rather crushing home truths to his assembled loved ones, it seems as though Matthew might have hit rock bottom. The truth, however, is that he has some way to go yet . . . With forensic precision and mordant wit, Matthew unpicks the threads that bind him: a comfortable home in the suburbs, a career spent trading futures and a life that bears little resemblance to the one he imagined for himself at twenty. When he unexpectedly bumps into Anna (the one who got away), the stage is set for an epic unravelling.Darkly funny, Trading Futures forces us to confront how change, like death, is an inevitable fact of life: feared by most, it can transform or overwhelm us. This is a brilliantly observed novel, for fans of works such as John Lanchester's Mr Phillips and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.It also featured as Radio 4's Book at Bedtime.

A haunting novel about the ones we love and the secrets they keep, by the acclaimed author of The Breaking of Eggs and Trading Futures.

This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain’s raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain’s cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain’s largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain’s raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain’s cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

This is the first full-length study of the effect of the American Civil War on Britain’s raw cotton trade and on the Liverpool cotton market. It includes an analysis of primary sources never used by historians. Before the civil war, America supplied 80 per cent of Britain’s cotton. In August 1861, this fell to almost zero, where it remained for four years. Despite increased supplies from elsewhere, Britain’s largest industry received only 36 per cent of the raw material it needed from 1862-64. This book establishes the facts of Britain’s raw cotton supply during the war: how much there was of it, in absolute terms and related to the demand, where it came from and why, how much it cost, and what effect the reduced supply had on Britain’s cotton manufacture. It includes an enquiry into the causes of the Lancashire cotton famine, which contradicts the historical consensus on the subject. Examining the impact of the civil war on Liverpool and its raw cotton market, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how reckless speculation infested and distorted the market, and lays bare the shadowy world of the Liverpool cotton brokers, who profited hugely from the war while the rest of Lancashire starved.

WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS is Jim Powell's fourth and most ambitious novel. Spanning four decades and moving between Britain, France and America, it is a timely chronicle of the generation that came of age in the post-war world. They championed freedom, blew the lid off convention and set out to change society - but did they? Published in two volumes, this powerful story captures the zeitgeist of the extraordinary times through which this generation has lived.In the first volume, Starting from Anywhere, we follow the novel's compelling cast of characters, 'baby boomers' taking their first steps into adulthood, moving through 1960s idealism and on to the excesses of the 1980s. The narrator, Tony Gethyn, is the link between them all - from his school friend bound for Vietnam and university friends bound for Parliament and the City to the people who drift in and out of his advertising days in Soho, among them a Washington lobbyist, a Black Country entrepreneur, a Nigerian charity worker, a London tabloid journalist and her broadsheet counterpart in New York. Running through many of these lives, blighting some and unsettling others, is the novel's anti-hero, who represents the worst of 1980s culture.

While the Music Lasts is Jim Powell's fourth and most ambitious novel. Spanning four decades and moving between Britain, France and America, it is a timely chronicle of the generation that came of age in the post-war world. They championed freedom, blew the lid off convention and set out to change society - but did they?Published in two volumes, this powerful story captures the zeitgeist of the extraordinary times through which this generation has lived.The second volume, Arriving Where We Started, opens in New Mexico in 1988, with narrator Tony Gethyn visiting his traumatised Vietnam veteran friend, and later moving to New York. Reflecting the onset of globalisation, some friends from earlier years have moved to New York or visit it often. Among them is the novel's socially dysfunctional anti-hero, now a property tycoon bestriding the global financial markets. Also in New York is someone for whom Tony has long held a candle, first met as a barmaid in a Cambridge pub, now a broadsheet journalist.By the time Tony returns England in 1992, some his friends there have climbed several rungs up the ladders of politics, law, global finance and the media; others have stalled or taken a fall.We follow their triumphs and tragedies through the decade to 9/11 and its reverberations and on to the economic meltdown of 2008.

WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS is Jim Powell's fourth and most ambitious novel. Spanning four decades and moving between Britain, France and America, it is a timely chronicle of the generation that came of age in the post-war world.They championed freedom, blew the lid off convention and set out to change society - but did they?Published in two volumes, this powerful story captures the zeitgeist of the extraordinary times through which this generation has lived. In the first volume, Starting from Anywhere, we follow the novel's compelling cast of characters, 'baby boomers' taking their first steps into adulthood, moving through 1960s idealism and on to the excesses of the 1980s. The narrator, Tony Gethyn, is the link between them all - from his school friend bound for Vietnam and university friends bound for Parliament and the City to the people who drift in and out of his advertising days in Soho, among them a Washington lobbyist, a Black Country entrepreneur, a Nigerian charity worker, a London tabloid journalist and her broadsheet counterpart in New York.Running through many of these lives, blighting some and unsettling others, is the novel's anti-hero, who represents the worst of 1980s culture.

While the Music Lasts is Jim Powell's fourth and most ambitious novel. Spanning four decades and moving between Britain, France and America, it is a timely chronicle of the generation that came of age in the post-war world. They championed freedom, blew the lid off convention and set out to change society - but did they?Published in two volumes, this powerful story captures the zeitgeist of the extraordinary times through which this generation has lived.The second volume, Arriving Where We Started, opens in New Mexico in 1988, with narrator Tony Gethyn visiting his traumatised Vietnam veteran friend, and later moving to New York. Reflecting the onset of globalisation, some friends from earlier years have moved to New York or visit it often. Among them is the novel's socially dysfunctional anti-hero, now a property tycoon bestriding the global financial markets. Also in New York is someone for whom Tony has long held a candle, first met as a barmaid in a Cambridge pub, now a broadsheet journalist.By the time Tony returns England in 1992, some his friends there have climbed several rungs up the ladders of politics, law, global finance and the media; others have stalled or taken a fall.We follow their triumphs and tragedies through the decade to 9/11 and its reverberations and on to the economic meltdown of 2008.