The Odyssey: A Dramatic Retelling of Homer's Epic

by Simon Armitage

Overview

"Armitage has given an ageless story new vigor, and has done it with style, wit and elegance."—Literary Review

In this new verse adaptation, originally commissioned for BBC radio, Simon Armitage has recast Homer's epic as a series of bristling dramatic dialogues: between gods and men; between no-nonsense Captain Odysseus and his unruly, lotus-eating, homesick companions; and between subtle Odysseus (wiliest hero of antiquity) and a range of shape-shifting adversaries—Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, the Cyclops—as he and his men are "pinballed between islands" of adversity. One of the most individual voices of his generation, Armitage revitalizes our sense of the Odyssey as oral poetry, as indeed one of the greatest of tall tales.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393330816
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/2008
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	152,543
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Simon Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and from 2015 to 2019 served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry. He has published ten collections of poetry and is the author of four stage plays, over a dozen television films, a libretto, two novels, and three memoirs. His poetry has won numerous awards, including a Gregory Award, a Forward Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In 2019 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

Editorial Reviews

Originally commissioned by the BBC and broadcast in 2004, Armitage's version is a radio play—a play for voices, now published in book form. At times, the reader may feel something is missing: The descriptive sentences that punctuate the dialogue are fairly terse ("Delirious and breathless, Odysseus collapses on the floor"), and one can only guess at the fun some BBC basement wizard must have had with the sound effects (thunderbolts, shades lapping at a puddle of freshly spilled blood and so on). For these moments of wistfulness, however, we are more than compensated by Armitage's pincer-move on Homer's epic, his combination of deep attentiveness and refreshing imaginative license.
—The New York Times

James Parker

One of Britain's most successful poets, the versatile and clever Armitage follows up his translation of the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" with this engaging and compulsively readable adaptation of Homer's epic, in which the wily sailor-hero Odysseus must outplay, outwit or outlast seductive nymphs, a malevolent enchantress, a one-eyed giant, and his own impious crew in order to reach his home island, his son and his faithful wife. Written for BBC radio, Armitage's version is not a translation of the ancient Greek epic, but rather a dramatic rendering, divided into scenes with parts (mostly in verse) for voice actors. Armitage delivers fast paced and decidedly contemporary language: Odysseus himself envisions "A freak wave cracking the keel of some poor sailing ship.... Just the Gods doing their thing." The transformation of a tale about one man into exchanges among sets of characters can make things seem choppy early on, but it pays off when Odysseus reaches home and has to maintain his disguise until he can slaughter his wife's suitors. Armitage's play will entertain, if not enlighten, anyone interested in the fresh ways that Homer's story can be told. (Apr.)

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