Steve Ely – författare

Ted Hughes's South Yorkshire tells the untold story of Hughes's Mexborough period (1938-1951) and demonstrates conclusively that Hughes's experiences in South Yorkshire in town and country, educationally, in literature and love were decisive in forming him as the poet of his subsequent fame.

Ted Hughes''s South Yorkshire tells the untold story of Hughes''s Mexborough period (1938-1951) and demonstrates conclusively that Hughes''s experiences in South Yorkshire in town and country, educationally, in literature and love were decisive in forming him as the poet of his subsequent fame.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's sinister and unsettling Gothic ballad 'Erlkoenig' ('The Erl-King', or 'The Elf King', 1782) has haunted artists working in several genres for over two centuries, provoking hundreds of ekphrastic responses, including works by the composer Franz Schubert, the novelist Michel Tournier and the artist Albert Sterner. Poet Steve Ely and artist Alan Parker's collaboration White Pony is the latest work to take its inspiration from Goethe's poem. Parker's distorted and disturbing paintings evoke a world of lurking threat, a crippling awareness of human amorality, and the spectral presence of death-in-the-midst-of-life. Ely's poems, jumping off from Parker's paintings as much as Goethe's poem, apply the nightmare implicit in both to the horrors of the contemporary world. Beginning with a sense of the absolute vulnerability of the child, the sequence expands in scope to encompass content including the Jimmy Savile scandal, the Gazan genocide, racism and misogyny, the corruption of the political class, and the rise of oligarchy and the gangster-terrorist state.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's sinister and unsettling Gothic ballad 'Erlkoenig' ('The Erl-King', or 'The Elf King', 1782) has haunted artists working in several genres for over two centuries, provoking hundreds of ekphrastic responses, including works by the composer Franz Schubert, the novelist Michel Tournier and the artist Albert Sterner. Poet Steve Ely and artist Alan Parker's collaboration White Pony is the latest work to take its inspiration from Goethe's poem. Parker's distorted and disturbing paintings evoke a world of lurking threat, a crippling awareness of human amorality, and the spectral presence of death-in-the-midst-of-life. Ely's poems, jumping off from Parker's paintings as much as Goethe's poem, apply the nightmare implicit in both to the horrors of the contemporary world. Beginning with a sense of the absolute vulnerability of the child, the sequence expands in scope to encompass content including the Jimmy Savile scandal, the Gazan genocide, racism and misogyny, the corruption of the political class, and the rise of oligarchy and the gangster-terrorist state.

I've played, watched and loved football all my life. Along with birds and birding it is my most enduring passion. So I thought I'd write about it. My original intention was to write a poetic history of football, from the creation to the present day. I started fluently, but one thing and another got in the way and the footballing Muse abandoned me after about twenty poems. The poems in this chapbook are those of the original twenty that made it through the selection process and got into the first eleven. Plus a sub. Messi comes last, but it is definitely not him. (Steve Ely)

"The poems in this book are improvisations arising from contemplative readings of four chapters of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible-Matthew VI, Mark V, Luke XV and Luke X. Lectio Violant-'profane reading'-is the name I've coined to describe this process, alluding to Lectio Divina-'divine reading'-the long-established Catholic practice of devotional reading, the purpose of which is to draw the reader closer to God by enabling a fuller experience of scripture. I'm not sure this book's doing the same thing, although you never know." -Steve Ely