Wednesday 11 June 2008

Fisher featured

This week's Poem Of The Week over at The Guardian is Roy Fisher's The Running Changes. Not necessarily too representative of his work (but then what is, because he covers such a wide range of poetries?) - still, I like it a lot.

For a change, there's lots of good stuff in the comments section, too. I particularly liked the suggestion that the compound words in the second half of the poem are an echo of Anglo-Saxon poetry and its kennings, and Old Norse, for that matter - Eric Bloodaxe was the king of the Viking kingdom of York. He was also, as I mentioned a week or so ago, the rival of saga hero Egil Skallagrimmson.

Everything I read lately keeps leading me back to the so-called dark ages.

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