Author(s): Simon Armitage

Poetry

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It took ten years for the Greeks to achieve victory at Troy, and for a further ten years Odysseus has been heading home, his journey dogged by perilous storms and treacherous landfalls. Now the Gods have decided it is time for the wandering hero to find Ithaca, before his faithful wife Penelope is forced to marry again. But angry Poseidon is seeking revenge for the mutilation of his son, and further dangers lie ahead if Odysseus is to be reunited with his family, and confront the suitors before time runs out. In this new verse adaptation, originally commissioned for BBC Radio, Simon Armitage has recast Homer's epic as a series of dramatic dialogues: between gods and men; between no-nonsense Captain Odysseus and his unruly, lotus-eating, homesick companions; between subtle Odysseus (wiliest hero of antiquity) and a range of shape-shifting adversaries - Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, the Cyclops - as he and his men are 'pinballed between islands' by adversity. "The Odyssey" is a book of changes, and Simon Armitage's retelling of Homer's epic quickens and revitalizes our sense of it as oral poetry: as indeed one of the greatest of tall tales.His version bristles with the economy, wit and guile that we have come to expect from one of the most individual voices of his generation. First published May 2006.