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Sappho

Sappho: Songs and Poems

Translated from the Greek

CHRIS PREDDLE

 

Here are Sappho’s songs and poems as English poems, all her famous pieces, all the fragments that can make connected sense, and all the discoveries of 2004 and 2014. These translations set out to be good English poetry first and foremost, and succeed well beyond other current versions. They have been made directly from Sappho’s Greek, by a poet with three collections to his credit, and are relatively close to the Greek. Each piece has a concise footnote that explains references and allusions, and suggests critical appreciation. A substantial Afterword says much more about Sappho’s themes, her art and style, and her historical setting.

$30.00

978-1-8382018-6-9 Hardback 154 pages
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Sappho is one of the greatest poets of the western world. She lived on the Greek island of Lesbos around 600 BCE, near the very beginning of western literature, and composed 300 or so poems and songs. Her poems create a woman-centred world in which women and relationships are highly valued, a world of beauty and grace, love and loss, sandals and hairbands, all sometimes exalted and idealised. She opposes women’s values to those of the dominant male society around her, and is the first to do this in the western canon. She was famous in her lifetime and has been deeply admired ever since.

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“For poetry lovers, lovers of the classics, lovers of love stories – all who care about social and gender equality, personal relationships and personal freedom.”
Chris Agee, poet and essayist

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About The Author

Chris Preddle, born in London in 1943, was educated at Stonyhurst, where the poet Peter Levi read out great poetry instead of Greek history, and at Oxford, where he studied Greek of all periods. He worked in libraries in the public and voluntary sectors, set up a childcare library, and has retired to a valley under the Yorkshire Pennines with Jacqueline and Sappho the cat. His third poetry collection is The May Figures (Eyewear, 2022); his second was Cattle Console Him (Waywiser Press, 2010). His work has appeared in Irish Pages and other Irish and English magazines. He fell in love with Sappho at school and started then to translate her. The versions and notes in this book come from 27 years of research, thought and writing.

Chris Preddle

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About The Author

Chris Preddle, born in London in 1943, was educated at Stonyhurst, where the poet Peter Levi read out great poetry instead of Greek history, and at Oxford, where he studied Greek of all periods. He worked in libraries in the public and voluntary sectors, set up a childcare library, and has retired to a valley under the Yorkshire Pennines with Jacqueline and Sappho the cat. His third poetry collection is The May Figures (Eyewear, 2022); his second was Cattle Console Him (Waywiser Press, 2010). His work has appeared in Irish Pages and other Irish and English magazines. He fell in love with Sappho at school and started then to translate her. The versions and notes in this book come from 27 years of research, thought and writing.

Weight 362 g
Dimensions 225 × 147 × 22 mm