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Life is a Game of Foxes & Rabbits
Poetry and Music by Michael George Gibson
This is a recording of my own poems together with tunes on tin and wooden whistles. When I give performances of my own work I usually do so in five parts: a Prologue, sections on ‘God – whatever that might be’, ‘God’s creatures’,and ‘He and She and Such’; and an Epilogue.
This CD has, of course, autobiographical elements. It has been edited for public presentation. There are 47 tracks.
Listen to a short extract:
The Pulse of Flame
True English Poetry Over 1,300 Years by Michael George Gibson
On this CD I present English poetry over 1,300 years, with music interwoven. In this performance of ‘the Heritage and Traditions, Movement and Rhythm of English Poetry’ I use so far as possible the original tones and tonguing of the time, from Modern English through Middle English to the Old English of Beowulf and Caedmon’s 8th century ‘Hymn of Creation’.
Many of the pieces, by such as Graves, Barnes, Herrick, Donne, Shakespeare Wyatt and so on through Chaucer and the ‘Gawain’ poet, are ‘love poems’.
Listen to an extract:
The Wanderer
Told and played by Michael George Gibson
This is a recording of the magnificent 115 line elegy found in the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book written in the 10th century. I have made the closest and most faithful translation, and my recording of this is followed by that of the original Old English text.
I have embellished my translation with pipe music, and the Old English has interludes on a 10-string harp.
It is my boast that in these performances I have demonstrated the true – though much debated and obscured – rhythm of all Old English poetry, including of course that of ‘Beowulf’ itself.
This wonderful lament is part of the matter that Tolkien drew on in writing his ‘Lord of the Rings’ and is a sure path to take to his ‘Middle-earth’.
Listen to the opening line of the poem, firstly in my own translation, and then in the original Old English:
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