Jenny Lewis has produced a versatile and inventive retelling of "Gilgamesh" which brings alive a story that is as resonant today as it was when first composed in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) four millennia ago. In 2012 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship to study cuneiform and she has worked with the British Museum, the Ashmolean Musem, Oxford, and Pegasus Theatre, on seminars and performances. Her approach relocates "Gilgamesh" to its earlier, oral roots in a Sumerian society where men and women were more equal, the reigning deity was female (Inanna), only women were allowed to brew beer and keep taverns and women had their own language – emesal. With this shift of emphasis, Lewis captures the powerful allure of the world's oldest poem and gives it a fresh dynamic while creating a fast-paced narrative for a new generation of readers, students and scholars. She is the first practicing woman poet to produce a full poetic translation.
About the Author
Jenny Lewis is an Anglo-Welsh poet, playwright, songwriter, children's author and translator who teaches poetry at Oxford University. She trained as a painter at the Ruskin School of Art before reading English at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. She has worked as an advertising copywriter and a government press officer for, among others,the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She has also written children's booksand plays and co-written a 26-part children's TV animation series, "James the Cat". Her first poetry sequence, "When I Became an Amazon" (Iron Press, 1996) was broadcast on BBC Woman's Hour, translated into Russian (Bilingua, 2002) and made into an opera with music by Gennadyi Shizoglazov which had its world premiere with the Tchaikovsky Opera and Ballet Company in Perm, Russia,November 2017. A song Jenny co-wrote with the singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyanin the 1960's, 'Train Song', has been used on TV commercials by Reebok and Samsung and for several TV series including the US crime drama, True Detective.It has had over five million hits on YouTube. Since 2012 Jenny has been working with the Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh on an award-winning, Arts Council funded project, 'Writing Mesopotamia', which aims to build bridges and foster friendships between English and Arabic-speaking communities. It has produced a huge range of outcomes including art collaborations, films, three chapbooks published by Mulfran Press – "Now as Then: Mesopotamia-Iraq" (2013), "Singing for Inanna" (2014) and "The Flood" (2017). Her work for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford includes "Map of Stars" (2002), "Garden of the Senses" (2005), "After Gilgamesh" (2011) and, with Yasmin Sidhwa and Adnan al-Sayegh, "Stories for Survival: aRe-telling of the 1001, Arabian Nights" (2015). She has published two collections with Oxford Poets/ Carcanet, "Fathom" (2007) and "Taking Mesopotamia" (2014). 55 poems from "Taking Mesopotamia" were published in Farsi (Soolar, Teheran 2017)and a fuller selection of her poems in English and Arabic, "Even at the Edge of the World" is forthcoming in 2018 from Dar Sutour, Baghdad/ Dar Al-Rafidain,Beirut. As part of the 'Writing Mesopotamia' project, "Gilgamesh Retold" won the Warden's Prize at Goldsmiths, London University for work that engages the public in innovative ways and it was also shortlisted for a Gladstone's Library Award. Jenny is currently completing a PhD on Gilgamesh at Goldsmiths.
