Search results for ""author anthony hirst""

An extremely varied collection of poetry mostly written in the period May 2021 to October 2023. The second part of the title, "at the road side" is, according to the Introduction, “a metaphor for where an ageing man feels himself to be in relation to the deteriorating world situation”. Included are several poems responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and towards the end of the book to the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. There are autobiographical sketches from the distant past, humorous and even silly poems, accounts of several dreams and their connection to reality, some anti-Christian poems, and as an appendix a nine-page piece of literary criticism in verse attacking Wordsworth's Ode on "The Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood". Many poems use constrained verse forms such as tanka and haiku and the 23-syllable 4-line stanza that Hirst has been using since the 1990s.

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Collected poems written between 1963 and 2020, most of them published here for the first time.

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This composite journal of the Covid Years is made up of the writings, artwork and photographs of twenty-seven contributors, whose ages at the time of writing or creating ranged from seven to over eighty. Most of them were in the UK but there are also contributions from Greece, Italy and the USA. The dated entries run from March 2020 to January 2023. Responses to the strange and disturbing years we have lived through range from the sorrow and anger of bereavement through calm reflections and gentle humour to mockery and bitter satire directed at some of our political leaders. It includes memorial tributes to two contributors who died during these years, and it is dedicated to all the staff of the NHS for their extraordinary devotion under incomparable difficulties. Colenso Books will donate any profits from the sale of this book to charities which benefit the UK National Health Service and its staff.

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There is no doubt that this is, to a considerable extent, an autobiographical novel. It is also clear that parts of it are fictional, but it is not possible to define with any clarity the boundary between autobiography and fiction. The author did serve in the US Army in the Korean War as an underage soldier, though he was probably not quite so young as the narrator claims to have been. The author’s second name “Toteras” is his chosen nom-de-plume, formed from two Greek words “to” and “teras”, meaning “the monster”. The novel begins with the narrator’s return from Korea suffering from what we would now call post-traumatic distress syndrome, and finding himself unable to face his family again. He falls in with a young woman who looks after him. This narrative breaks off to be resumed only in the final chapter of the book, and there follow several chapters in which his early life in San Francisco's Greektown is recounted. Conflicting demands — of their families to be Greek and of their school to become Americans — drive him and his best friend to obtain fake birth certificates, enabling them to enlist, at the age of fourteen, in the US army. Between basic training and embarkation for the Far East they take a bizarre trip to Mexico, where they become involved with a rich American couple who need to involve others in their sex-life. The two teenage soldiers are sent to the Mariana Islands where they are occupied in dismantling a World-War-Two ammunition dump. After an explosion which kills some of their colleagues, they are granted leave, and go to Japan to meet up with a sergeant (also of Greek origin) whom they had made friends with in the training camp. Through a series of mishaps they end up being sent to Korea with the first scratch-force of US troops, following the news that the North Koreans had crossed the 38th Parallel, and they are involved in the first US battles of the Korean War, battles in which the US army was repeatedly defeated with immense loss of life. The battles of Osan, the Pyongtaek Bridge and Taejon are described in graphic and horrific detail, and several subsequent battles are referred to. The novel was completed in the early 1990s, but clearly not to the satisfaction of the author, who died in 2009, leaving it unpublished. The surviving typescripts were problematic, almost unpunctuated and full of errors. They have been painstakingly edited over a number of years and some of the material in the early (Greektown) chapters has had to be rearranged to create a coherent narrative and to remove repetition. The style undoubtedly owes something to Kerouac but the content is far beyond his scope, as it brings us face to face with the insanity and the horror of war and the nature of fear; but it is not without humour, and much of the humour has to do with sex. In this the narrator and his buddy are opposites: the narrator a romantic innocent, his buddy precocious and sex-mad. Although, as noted, the narrative of the weeks after his return alone from Korea is resumed in the concluding chapter, there is no conclusion, for we are left with a final moment of dramatic suspension, not knowing what exactly has just happened and with no clue as to what the narrator’s future will be.

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A collection of 25 short poems constituting an appeal for peace and understanding between Greek and Turkish communities in Cyprus, with facing translations into Turkish and English. There are biographical notes on the author and the two translators, "In place of a prologue" before the poems, and "In place of an epilogue" and "Plus an essay" at the end; all these items are, like, the poems, in all three languages. The essay develops the theme of the poems in a more direct and explicit manner.

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A selection of the poems of Sappho and other Ancient Greek authors translated into English verse by Theodore Stephanides, with facing Greek texts from editions which correspond closely to the translations. There is a substantial introduction and extensive notes by the editor, Anthony Hirst.

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'a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe' E. M. Forster E. M. Forster's description of C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933) perfectly encapsulates the unique perspective Cavafy brought to bear on history and geography, sexuality and language in his poems. Cavafy writes about people on the periphery, whose religious, ethnic and cultural identities are blurred, and he was one of the pioneers in expressing a specifically homosexual sensibility. His poems present brief and vivid evocations of historical scenes and sensual moments, often infused with his distinctive sense of irony. They have established him as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century. This volume presents the most authentic Greek text of the 154 authorized poems ever published, together with a new English translation that conveys the accent and rhythm of Cavafy's individual tone of voice. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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A collection of eleven short stories embodying the impact on the rural population of a mountainous district of nortwestern Greece of the events of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War that followed.

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