Publisher's Synopsis
At the centre of Prisoners of Transience are the translations of seven German poets writing during the Thirty Years War, a period now much neglected.
The general violence and desolation are portrayed as vividly in the poetry of that time as in its visual art. The fragility and uncertainty of life provoked a variety of responses in poets like Andreas Gryphius, Friedrich von Logau, Paul Fleming and Catharina von Greiffenberg, Sheenagh Pugh skilfully captures not just the despair in Gryphius, but the intense religious response of von Greiffenberg and the lighter escapism of von Hofmannswaldau. These seven poets are accompanied by others from Mediaeval times, such as Catherine de Pisan and Charles d'Orleans, and from the nineteenth century, in Theodor Storm and Stefan George. The translator is comfortably at home within all these periods in a collection informed by the wryness, precision, feeling and wit which mark her own poetry.
"Sheenagh Pugh is a remarkable, sometimes brilliant poet. Her great gifts are accessibility, wit, subtle rhyme schemes and the power to illuminate half-forgotten corners of history"
Merryn Williams
"Among the top two or three poets of her generation writing English poetry in Wales"
Poetry Wales
Sheenagh Pugh is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.
