David Constantine Readings
The Greek Anthology, marvellous salvage from the vast shipwreck of the Ancient World, is a collection of around 4500 poems composed over more than 1500 years by about 300 authors, a colossal continuity and variety from pre-classical times through Roman into Byzantine. For A Bird Called Elaeus – his small anthology of the vast original – David Constantine has gone not just to the renowned love poems but also to poems that treat man’s dealings with the earth, his work and trades there, the creatures other than himself who inhabit it and the divinities whose care it is.
A Bird Called Elaeus is David Constantine’s seventh translation from Bloodaxe, following three editions of Friedrich Hölderlin, and collections by Henri Michaux, Philippe Jaccottet and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, including two books for which he received the European Poetry Translation Prize and the Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation.
'... I recommend it above all for the brilliance with which its translations bring those worlds and their poetry to life. I believe people with little or no existing interest in ancient Greek writing will be won over by these versions’ beauty and force.' – Edmund Prestwich, London Grip, on A Bird Called Elaeus
Bloodaxe joint online launch event, Friday 8 November 2024, 7pm GMT
David Constantine joined Marie Howe and Philip Gross as all three poets read from their new books and discussed their work with each other and with Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
Available to watch via the video below or on our YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/live/lEW5RAH5R-g
David Constantine reads from A Bird Called Elaeus
David Constantine introduces and reads from A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology, his selection of poems from The Greek Anthology. Neil Astley filmed him at his home in Oxford in May 2023 ahead of the book's publication in 2024.
LAUNCH EVENT FOR BELONGINGS
17 November 2020, Joint Bloodaxe live-streamed launch event
David Constantine, Kerry Hardie and W.N. (Bill) Herbert launched their new poetry collections on 17 November 2020.
Hosted by editor Neil Astley from his home in Northumberland, this event was streamed live through the Bloodaxe Books YouTube channel on Tuesday 17th November. Wonderful readings by all three poets were followed by discussion and a Q&A with the online audience.
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As well as a poet, David Constantine is a renowned translator. Below is a film of David reading two poems from his 2018 expanded edition of Friedrich Hölderlin.
David Constantine on Friedrich Hölderlin
Constantine introduces Hölderlin and his poetry, discussing how translating Greek poetry (at first Pindar) helped Hölderlin evolve his own way of writing in German. Like Beethoven, Hölderlin was inspired by the French Revolution before it went wrong, and Constantine discusses the relevance also of Hölderlin to the times we live in, most particularly when there has been renewed interest in his work, such as during both world wars and during the period of social revolt in Germany in the 1960s. Constantine reads two poems from his edition of Hölderlin's Selected Poetry, ‘Once there were gods…’ (‘Götter wandelten einst…’), written in the spring of 1799 (but not published until 1909), and ‘The sun goes down’ (‘Geh unter, schöne Sonne…’), written some time before May 1800 but not published until 1846, three years after his death.
[04 December 2024]
