Regeneration

Regeneration’ is a Welsh poet Meirion Jordan’s take on the medieval manuscripts known today as Llyfr Coch Hergest and Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (the Red Book of Hergest and the White Book of Rhydderch). This collection is not a ‘reinterpretation’ but a re-imagining, inspired by the source material that include the stories of the Mabinogi (first made famous by the Victorian translations of Lady Charlotte Guest) as well as by Mallory’s version of King Arthur’s tales. In (Red Book) we meet characters drawn from the eleven stories of the Mabinogi, like ‘Arawn, lord of Annwn’; ‘Rhiannon’s gossips’ and ‘Bodeuedd (the woman made of flowers)’. These poems evoke what Meirion Jordan calls in his insightful preface ‘half-recalled heroic landscapes’ they capture the elusive essence of these characters, their mysterious passions and their sometimes violent and often strange adventures in Jordan’s distinctive poetic style. His pared-down pure lyricism, and tightly enjambed free-verse lines bring brevity and clarity to these tales without subtracting their unsettling power to move us. (White Book), gives us a cast of kings, queens, knights and companions of the round table. This long poem treats themes of love, betrayal, friendship, kinship, and the vexed question of leadership, in poems that revolve around the contentious figure of King Arthur. The footnotes provide for scale, casting the great themes of Arthur’s story against a backdrop of real lives, lived in the landscapes that inspired the original myths.