From Base Materials

Rich and various, From Base Materials ranges thematically from violence towards women, love in old age and surviving cancer to translations from Arabic and Russian and a topical re-imagining of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The poems speak of formation, transformation and the struggles of the human spirit to transmute 'base matter' and accept mortality and frailty of the flesh with courage and compassion. For the long poem, 'Love in Old Age', Jenny Lewis says: 'Although it addresses a lover, it is really about multiple experiences of love (both real and imagined) throughout a long life and how I am as much a literary construct as a human individual. I have drawn on literature that has shaped me, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, early Celtic nature poetry and hermit poetry and, more recently, feminist writings such as those of Hé lè ne Cixous.'

Jenny Lewis is a poet, playwright, translator and songwriter who teaches poetry at Oxford University. She has had seven plays and poetry cycles performed at major UK theatres and published four collections; the most recent, Gilgamesh Retold (Carcanet, 2018), was a New Statesman Book of the Year, an LRB Bookshop Book of the Week and Carcanet's first audio book. Jenny has also published three chapbooks from Mulfran Press in English and Arabic with the exiled Iraqi poet Adnan Al-Sayegh.