Joanna Boulter's first full-length poetry collection takes the form of a long sequence based on the life and turbulent times of the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Taking Shostakovich's "Preludes & Fugues" as her starting point, the poet puts together a deeply-considered and thoroughly-researched account of the composer's life, with the 'preludes' written in free or invented forms in the third person, and the 'fugues' in any strict poetic form in the first person as the voice of the composer himself. The effect of these poems is cumulative and together they make an original contribution to the assessment and celebration of the life and work of Shostakovich.
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"Joanna Boulter's superb new book, a novella in an impressive variety of verse forms, translates the composer's life and fears into a musical language which, in all its repsects, brings illumination to Shostakovich's gifts for honesty and truth under pressure." David Morley
About the Author
Joanna Boulter was born in 1942 and grew up in Wiltshire. She studied at London University, where she read Music, English and Latin, graduating in 1963. After a brief teaching career, she worked for a typesetting firm, then on marriage lived for two years in Singapore and Malaysia. A civilian posting to Teheran followed, and then she and her family returned to the UK, where she began writing again after several years' gap. After living in various parts of the country, each a little further north, she has now settled in Darlington, and finds the NE region very supportive of its writers. Her poetry has earned her a Tyrone Guthrie Fellowship from Northern Arts, a Northern Promise award from New Writing North, and a Hawthornden Fellowship. In 2002 she gained an MA in Writing Poetry, with Distinction, from Newcastle University, and the following year won first prize in the Poetry London competition. Previous publications include three pamphlets: 'Running With The Unicorns', from The Bay Press (1994), 'On Sketty Sands' (2001), and 'The Hallucinogenic Effects of Breathing' (2003), both from Arrowhead Press. She is a founder member of the Darlington women's writing co-operative Vane Women, teaches a women's writing class, and works as an editor. 'Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich' is her first full-length collection.
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Note: this is Not Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues,
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This review is from: Twenty Four Preludes and Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich (Paperback)
This is notI expected this to literally be Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues. I intended to play it on the piano.However, this book was merely poetry vaguely about these preludes and fugues.
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