Ten Years A Bard: Poetry from the Current Middle Ages

Most of these poems are, in one way or another, SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) poems either poems written for or about people in the two Kingdoms (West and Outlands) where I have so far lived and played, or poems about persons or events in the SCA period (approximately 600-1600 AD). The West Kingdom poems were written in 1995-1997, when I lived in the Barony of Earngyld (mundanely Juneau, Alaska). The Outlands poems were written from early 1998 through early 2006 in the Barony of Caerthe (Denver, Colorado). The Welsh poems overlap the Outlands poems in time, but are separated from them by their different content; some were written for the Colorado Welsh Society, others for bardic competitions. They were all previously published in two collections under the titles "King Arthur's Raid on Hell" and "Pryderi's Pigs".

Most of these poems are written in period forms, or approximations of period forms one of my on-going quests being a search for ways of reproducing the sound and feel of medieval Welsh poetry in modern English! And yet, because the bardic art I practice is a performance art, these are in a larger sense not my poems at all, but merely pale imitations poems preserved on paper. Until I can come and sing the real poems to you, I hope you will enjoy the substitutes.

Dettagli