"Taking Mesopotamia" was originally inspired by Jenny Lewis's search for her lost father – the young South Wales Borderer who fought in the ill-fated Mesopotamian campaign of World War I. Through reconstructed diary extracts, witness statements, formal poems and free verse, the book extends into a wider exploration of the recent Iraq wars. It also includes translations of a number of the poems into Arabic, and photographs taken by Lewis's father on campaign in 1916. Woven throughout the book is a strand inspired by "The Epic of Gilgamesh", whose themes of hubris, abuse of power and fear of death show us how little the world has changed in four thousand years.
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.
Reviews
"'Taking Mesopotamia' is a truly memorable piece of work. Lewis is an acutely attentive observer, but this is more than a poetic documentary – it lives as much in the ear as in the imagination, so well acoustically arranged that we cannot forget any of the voices in it" – Jane Draycott
"'Taking Mesopotamia' – a brilliantly ironic title for our times – controls its anger through an accomplished and flexible technique in verse and prose. It is [...] an eloquent rejoinder to those who say poetry can't, or shouldn't, concern itself with public matters" – Bernard O'Donoghue
"'Taking Mesopotamia' is easily the best collection of poetry I've read so far this year" – Gareth Prior's blog
