Handwriting

Author(s): Michael Ondaatje

Poetry

The poems in Handwriting, Michael Ondaatje's most recent collection, are memories of Sri Lanka: the rituals and traditions, history and geography, the smells and tastes and colours of his first home. Here are sunless forests, cattle-bells, stilt-walkers 'with the movement of prehistoric birds'; a Buddha buried 'so roots/like fingers of a blind monk/spread for two hundred years over his face'; saffron and panic seed, lotus flowers, sandalwood; a lover, who lay her fearless heart/light as a barn owl/against him all night'. Handwriting is an elegy for lost childhood, for a culture and language lost to the turmoil of history, but it is also a glimpse of the source of the writer's delicate, erotic, mysterious imagination. By focussing on writing frankly about beautiful things, Ondaatje takes the poems beyond narrative to these simple, deeply sensual images - given to us in a language that is pared, cursive and exquisite.

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Product Information

Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka in 1943 and has lived in Canada since 1962. His books include Running in the Family, a volume of memoir, five novels - including The English Patient which won the 1992 Booker Prize - and many collections of poetry. Handwriting was first published in 1998 and is reissued to coincide with the publication of his new novel, The Cat's Table.

General Fields

  • : 9780224093804
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Jonathan Cape Ltd
  • : 0.112
  • : September 2011
  • : 198mm X 130mm X 7mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : November 2011
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Michael Ondaatje
  • : Paperback
  • : English
  • : 811.54
  • : 80