Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Translated and told by Michael George Gibson
My present project is a recording of my own translation of the whole of the 14th century ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’. No complete recording has been made before.
I have already made the first recording of the entire text in its Middle English dialect.
The story takes 3 hours to tell in all its magnificence.
Listen to an extract:
In my translation and my presentation of the original text I shall be demonstrating a simple musically-based solution to the rhythmic nature of the alliterative verse.
Tolkien, who was one of the editors of the text, does get quite close in his own translation; but I shall more faithfully represent the true diction, quantity and rhythm of the lines than does he, Marie Borroff, Brian Stone, Keith Harrison or that most recent pretender, Simon Armitage.
There will be a single CD of extracts from both the translation and the original text.
Metrical Theory
Rhythmical principles in English Poetry by Michael George Gibson
In due course I shall produce a CD on which I demonstrate the simple, underlying, musically-based rhythmical principles that have informed most English poetry from its earliest written beginnings. This recording will probably have the title: On Musical Measures in English Verse
I shall take issue with the long, wearisome and tyrannical attempts by so many prosodists to apply pseudo-classical measures and methodology to all English verse. One leading voice in the world of modern poetry has crassly suggested that
‘The iambic pentameter is in our bones, and affects how we feel our language.’
This is nonsense.
A Song of The Scythe and other poems
A smallholder’s harvest of verses by Michael George Gibson
I intend to publish a book of poetry, possibly with illustrations, to be called: A Song of the Scythe and other poems