The true nature of English poetry
In his handwritten book "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight A Translation" Michael Gibson has achieved what he thinks may be the ‘closest’ version yet of this fourteenth century masterpiece. Then, in a companion book that is also handwritten and is called "Truth, Dare, Kiss… Cheat!" he tells how he addressed aspects of the tale that had long baffled him, and of ‘falling into’ a surprising new ‘perspective’ on it.
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In 2007 Simon Armitage published a translation of the fourteenth century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In 2018 he published a Revised Edition. In a “NOTE” on this new version he says: There are no radical changes, particularly in the tone and attitude of the translation and its emphasis on alliteration;
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It is almost fifty years ago that I first gained some acquaintance with the wonderful 14th century poem called ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. Since that time I have grown to love and respect its wonderful wit and craftsmanship more deeply.
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It was in 2004 that I took a more active interest in The Poetry Society of which I had been a member for some years. It had long seemed to me that most of the new pieces that were published as ‘poetry’ in the Society’s quarterly Newsletter and in its magazine Poetry Review were not truly poetry at all.
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I ask the question because I found the process of learning a poem of his for the purpose of recitation somewhat maddening. I am used to memorising poetry. the better to perform it; and sometimes I can master a poem in a day, but it took me months to memorise ‘The Hawk in the Rain’, the title poem of Ted Hughes’
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