J A M E S H A R P U R | |||||||||
Books ~ Click on each cover below to go to reviews and ordering details | |||||||||
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The White Silhouette
‘I have rarely encountered a
contemporary voice that brings out as strongly and convincingly as does
James Harpur’s in The White
Silhouette the way in which spiritual wrestlings and traditions can
live again in poetry.’ Michael O’Neill,
London Magazine
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‘A simply perfect book of poems … a poetry of compressed knowledge and
sheer delight in telling tales … an exemplary text that should be read by
anyone planning to bring out a book of poems.’
‘There is a deceptive clarity, an almost translucent surface to the poems
which belies their complexity and ambition. These are poems in search of –
and in response to – the numinous, the sacred, but they never settle for
easy pieties or shortcuts.’
Michael Symmons Roberts and Moniza Alvi,
PBS Bulletin
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The Dark Age Winner of the 2009 Michael Hartnett Award‘His poetry, always strongly imbued with a sense of the sacred, makes great play of light’s spiritual resonance ... his brilliant imagery and luxuriant natural descriptions offer plenty to enjoy.’ Sarah Crown, The Guardian
'The presence of divinity within
The Dark Age is tender, subtle, Harpur is not proselytising. And if
the force of "God" is present throughout, it's mostly through the
inexplicable process that brings the supernal into art, sewing itself
through the poetry with a gilt thread that makes Harpur's words sing.'
Grace Wells, Contrary Magazine (Chicago)
'This is not California, not
Hockney 's incandescent poolside: it is windswept 'He writes movingly of the burden of prophetic obedience, and enables historic echoes of "devilish tricks", miracles, and powerful prayer to ring true in contemporary language.' Martyn Halsall, Church Times
'Harpur succeeds in making these half-forgotten heroes of
antiquity live, capturing glimmers of old light for a new dark age ...
they have the feel of bright miniatures painted inside the initial letters
of a medieval manuscript vivid pictures that also happen to talk ...
Harpur leads us into the difficult territory where words cease to be of
use. His triumph in The Dark Age is to make the darkness shimmer
with light.' Duncan Sprott, Agenda |
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Fortune’s Prisoner: The Poems of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy Imprisoned by Theodoric, the Ostrogothic king of Italy, and facing the possibility of execution, the Roman statesman and philosopher Boethius (c. 480-524) wrote his famous Consolation of Philosophy, a work that combines prose with verse.
‘With a poet’s flair, James
Harpur has rendered the Consolation’s poems in a fresh, modern translation
as a sequence in their own right. From the prisoner’s initial despairing
dirge, to Philosophy’s final plea for people to recognize their divine
nature, the poems explore classic themes such as the character of Fortune,
free will, the problem of evil and the nature of justice.
‘Boethius’s deeply
intricate thought is here distilled into beautiful aperçus .... as a dream
dreamt in a cell of nightmare, it should inspire everyone.’ 'Harpur has done a fine job in presenting his subject in a fresh and original way.' Rory Brennan, Books Ireland
'Harpur makes exquisite music out of
this material ... He has made true poems in our vernacular, but the
language, or clusters of images and persons, does |
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‘James Harpur is ... not in the least like anyone else ... His is an amazingly consistent voice, compelling in intensity....his is a world of insight and intuitions....If you’re brave enough, read him. He will take you into a world you will find difficult to forget.’ R.J. Bailey, Envoi “Harpur takes the stuff of superstition – a Celtic monk, a Delphic priest, an Assyrian extispicist, a superannuated auspex – and gives it a persuasively timeless, often disturbing significance ... Oracle Bones offers a kind of religious poetry. It does not, however, carry a whiff of the ‘pious’ – rather, it has ‘a sense of the sacred running in parallel to the quotidian’. Peter Reading, TLS ‘The movement of the verse is beautifully controlled, the employment of rhyme (or, more precisely, near-rhyme) wonderfully delicate. Harpur’s craftmanship articulates a sense of profound spirituality – especially in ‘Dies Irae’, a long poem, spoken out of the Dark Ages, that I felt compelled to read over and over ... The volume of poetry published this year that I have returned to most often ...’ Anthony Haynes, The Tablet (Books of the year) ‘This is serious stuff ... a map of heaven and hell, of prayer and meditation, of redemption and of unity ... Harpur’s genius has in ‘Dies Irae’ produced the answer to ‘The Waste Land’ that Eliot himself was himself incapable of. It remains only for the rest of us to catch up, and catch on.’ Michael Killingworth, Magma
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“James Harpur’s second book is disciplined, intelligent...His sources are the Bible, the Aeneid, Bede and Irish laments. But Harpur doesn’t flirt with erudition. The Monk’s Dream is an intricate exploration of death – not death alone, but the mystery that surrounds the experience...The title poem...suggests a belief in unseen forces, be they supernatural or imaginative; because of these, an ordinary life is significant beyond death. This idea also informs several of the book’s excellent translations and adaptations. In all, The Monk’s Dream is a finely weighted and balanced work of elegy.” Richard Tyrell, TLS “His whole collection represents a struggle with a conundrum with mortality...At the centre is the sonnet sequence about his father’s death, ‘The Frame of Furnace Light’. It is an extraordinary piece of writing... Harpur represents his father with such clarity and sympathy as to render his gradual decline almost unbearable.” Maggie O’Farrell, Poetry Review Harpur’s work is grounded in a firm awareness of the ‘sensate life’...but whether in an unnamed monk’s prophetic dream of the death of William II, in Enkidu’s dying dream of the underworld, or in the spiritual apprehensions which characterise the more directly personal poems, there is everywhere a sense of what lies beyond the limitations of the merely sensate. Harpur is a serious and intelligent poet who deserves to find many readers. Glyn Pursglove, Acumen ‘Sure-footed and accessible, with the occasional touch of that rarest of qualities, pure insight.’ Glyn Holden, Ambit |
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Vision of Comets “Harpur is just how I like poets – skilled, erudite, in love with language, and with proper humility.” Stride “Harpur’s tunes are chiefly lyrical ... the ‘welter of accumulated memories’is skilfully caught.” Independent on Sunday “It is in his poems on religious themes that the poet comes into his own, skillfully using a fluid free verse in the monologues ‘Samson to his Maker’ and ‘Messiah’ and creating a frieze of great charm in ‘The Magi’. Poetry Wales “Harpur’s sensibility is attuned to love, time, myth, the numinous – the makings of poetry...my opinion warmed as I read ... Harpur has an imaginative wonder.” London Magazine |
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The Gospel of Joseph of Arimathea
'James Harpur uses the legend of
Joseph of Arimathea's voyage to Britain's shores with the young Jesus as
the prompt for Joseph to search out those who were closest to Jesus in his
final years. As he continues to travel around on business, Joseph
describes each meeting in prose, and then the person he is visiting tells
of his/her time with Jesus in hauntingly beautiful poetry. The words play
on your imagination till you can see the scene that they are describing. I
found I had to read it to myself as if I was reading aloud, and then go
back to the beginning and read it through again and again.' |
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