Well, boys and girls, the great day has finally dawned when my second poetry collection finds its way into the sticky hands of people who ought to know better.

:D

I'm happy and excited and not really sure what to expect. I hope some of you may consider buying a copy of BOUDICCA & CO and I also hope that those of you who do actually buy it end up feeling pleased you did so!

Here are some unpublishment endorsements that other writers have been kind enough to give the book (and yes, they did read it first!):


"Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of “ruins under rain,” hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain’s fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical."

from Clare Pollard


"Jane Holland’s Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior—of both country and psyche—in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It’s a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition."

from Fiona Sampson


" “—the grip/ of the wheel, a licence to roam.” Jane Holland’s poetry smoulders and blazes. Take your deepest breath, and go with her."

from Alison Brackenbury


Here's the link to buy it online ... BOUDICCA & CO..

Happy Reading!

:D :D :D

Congratulations! :)

Do bring some to sell when you come to Buzzwords.

Well done Jane! Well done Chris! :D

Congratulations - May the Iceni flourish.....

I saw the poet Sophia Blackwell do a series of Sappho versions and translations on stage once, wearing a blue toga with sparkly sandals and employing various Sappho-related props ( like a cucumber ... DON'T ask!) but I'm not sure about my Boudicca poem sequence.

Should I turn up to poetry readings in a cardboard chariot, perhaps in a red wig with waist-length plaits and carrying a spear?

:o

No?

thought you might like to see this one, written a couple of years ago:

Boudicca

"Boudicca was tall, terrible to look on and gifted with a powerful voice. A flood of bright red hair ran down to her knees; she wore a golden necklet made up of ornate pieces, a multi-coloured robe and over it a thick cloak held together by a brooch. She took up a long spear to cause dread in all who set eyes on her." – Dio Cassius


The fierce land cradled her; taught her the deadly
beauty of the salt-marsh, the supple strength
of the Willow. She knew how the Rowan’s pride
could blaze in fall, never bowing its head
before the storms and she attended Hemlock
to secure its whispered promise.
She grasped at height from her father’s shoulders;
pulled herself upwards by his shield, stretched
her limbs to the measure of his spear.

No-one thought to tell her that she couldn’t own fire:
on winter nights, in the long house when tellings
of heroes and gods swirled in the smoke,
she leant close to the flame and drew in the flare
and heat of it on her breath with the stories and songs.

See how our queen blazes in the field. See how the fire
loves the bone and the blood and even the hair of her,
how the flames lick under her skin and scorch a path
before her. Her women chill Roman veins with shrieks
and wild rags and her eyes burn Legions to shame.

Is that one of yours. Angela? It's lovely, very Celtic in mood and style. I fear though that my version of Boudicca may not quite come up to scratch there, as she's very much like me, which means pragmatic and ruthless and maybe a little unpleasant at times in order to get things done! No heroes or gods about, and not too much swirling smoke. (Though she certainly 'blazes in the field'!) This is Boudicca with grenades, rifle butts and plenty of bloody hand-to-hand combat, often either preceded by sex or as part of it. It's also very grim in places. I was watching the war in Croatia* whilst writing some of the poems, and that conflict worked its way into the mix. They are very much poems about the horror and anguish and atrocity of civil war, and also about tribal identities versus national identity, as much as they are about the mysterious figure of Boudicca herself. Some of the poems were so unspeakably grim - Roman women tortured, children murdered, mass graves in burnt-out villages - that I actually removed them from the sequence. Maybe when I do a Collected at the age of eighty I can put them back in ...

Dio Cassius. Well, can we believe someone who was writing several hundred years after Boudicca had died? He seems to have jazzed up his description of Boudicca in the same way that the tabloids sex up stories to sell newspapers. Even Tacitus, a far more sober stylist and writing nearer the time, is potentially dodgy as a source of information, since he too has a particular political agenda. In the end, nothing is certain. So writers like myself are perfectly free to recast characters like Boudicca in whatever light seems right for their time.

There's some humour in the poems too though. Once or twice. Well, at least once. I think.

;)


* Actually, I think it's known now as the 'War in the Balkans' or the former Yugoslavia. Though at or around the time when I was writing these poems - researching and writing them - from the mid-late nineties through to about 2000, there always seemed to be conflict in that area. And elsewhere in the world too. The Gulf War had just finished and everywhere you looked there seemed to be civil wars or foreign invasions or military coups ... it just felt like war was ubiquitous, and that writing pastoral or lyrical poetry in the face of that truth was somehow frivolous. So I stopped looking out of the window and started looking inside instead. And found Boudicca!

The way I see it, it would be a gimmick to turn up without the chariot, red wig and spear. :P


In Colchester there is an "Iceni House" - it's a big nondescript grey building. I think it's council offices or something to do with tax.

When I lived in Boscastle, there was a tiny cottage on a tight corner as you approached Tintagel from the Camelford side, which I swear was called ICENI.

It was impossible to stop, being such a dangerous road, but I always craned madly to see that house name and wondered who could have named it Iceni and why. No connection to Boudicca, perhaps, but she's been a part of my life for so many years now, it always felt like a good omen, seeing that house name, as though those unpublished poems would one day come into the light ...

Thus the superstitious mind. :D

Hey, I was only joking about the Boudicca outfit, Edmund. People have trouble persuading me not to wear jeans to everything, even weddings etc. I think that I have a sort of lesbian look going for me. Which can be amusing sometimes. Is she? Isn't she?

:rolleyes:

I do love to tease ...

And I was only joking about it being a gimmick not to not not not wear the outfit!


I'm not asking, I'm just presuming that Sophia Blackwell used the cucumber to make a nice salad with perhaps some lettuce and olives to munch on later.

I think the event was called something like 'Sappho at Sainsbury's'. She had a whole shopping bag and a poem to go with each item. I'm afraid I think the cucumber had a more intimate role than that of being chopped into a salad. Here she is with a tomato ... a Greek 'love apple' .... :blink:

And mandrakes bear tomato-shaped fruit... They were thought to be an aphrodisiac and to promote fertility, as when Rachel says "mandrakes of your son" in Genesis. There's sound poetry here too as in Hebrew mandrake is 'duda'im' and lovemaking is 'dodim', creating a very sexy din throughout the Song of Songs.

Jane - I was just wondering if you know about http://www.hagsharlotsheroines.com/index.asp I should think that youre is the sort of book they may like to review :)