A celebration of the prize-winning poet Christopher Logue’s innovative versions of Homer’s Iliad, known collectively as War Music, will take place at the University of Bristol this week.
The event will feature readings from Logue’s version by members of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and reflections from Craig Raine, poet and publisher of Logue’s work.
Hosted by the University’s Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition, the event takes place on Wednesday 7 November from 2pm to 6pm in Lecture Theatre 1, 3/5 Woodland Road, University of Bristol.
Professor David Hopkins, who organised the event, said: “Christopher Logue has been engaged on this sequence of innovative and widely-admired adaptations of episodes from Homer since the 1960s. This event offers a celebration and appraisal of Logue's achievement, combining readings from the poem with reflections by Logue's former publisher, the distinguished poet Craig Raine, and three classicists who will consider War Music as a response to Homer's original.”
Christopher Logue was born in Portsmouth in 1926. The first volume of War Music, the Patrocleia, was published in 1962. GBH and Pax make up the rest of the core poem, along with Kings and The Husbands. Since their publication, Logue has also written two additional volumes, All Day Permanent Red and Cold Calls, the latter of which won the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award.
War Music has created some controversy among classicists as Logue does not know Ancient Greek and instead bases his work on other translations of the Iliad, including those of Chapman and Pope. He also forsakes most of Homer's notable stylistic features for a looser structure and alters the plot and characters in many minor points.
Keynote speaker Craig Raine is an award-winning poet and Fellow of New College, Oxford. His works include: The Onion, Memory (1978), A Martian Sends a Postcard Home (1979), A Free Translation (1981), Rich (1984), History: The Home Movie (1994), and Clay. Whereabouts Unknown (1996).
The event will also include responses from Professor Michael Silk of King's College, London, Dr Emily Greenwood of the University of St Andrews and Dr Vanda Zajko of the University of Bristol, three distinguished classicists with experience of reading Homer in the original.
The event is free of charge and all are welcome. Please inform sam.barlow@bristol.ac.uk if you wish to attend.