Gilgamesh

“Stunning … This is not a museum-piece translation, a dusty tablet behind glass, but a reanimation, a voice tugged up from the clay and made to speak again in a tongue that is ours. Mr. Armitage writes with a poet’s mastery of rhythm and rupture, refusing both the sterile fidelity of the scholar and the vulgar opportunism of the adapter. His is an epic that breathes—raggedly, unevenly, but thrillingly alive.” – William Giraldi - Wall Street Journal
“Simon Armitage’s new verse translation of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’ is unhurried and resplendent, archaizing without being antiquated … channeling the age of Gilgamesh as well as the epic’s own obsession with the past.” – Nicolas Liney - Los Angeles Review of Books
”[A]n impressively readable, unerringly thoughtful Gilgamesh … one that blends a genuine respect for the scholarship with the same poetic instinct that has made him one of our contemporary masters. … [Y]ou need to run, not walk, to your nearest bookstore, and pick up a copy of this marvelous new translation of a timeless work, our best, most lucid and fluent Gilgamesh to date.” – Eric Bies - The Orange County Review of Books
“In translating the epic with clarity and linguistic finesse, Armitage proves that it does not take a degree in Assyriology for a poet to tell an enchanting tale or for a reader to step away from it with something powerful. He proves his central argument: ‘Nobody owns Gilgamesh, because everybody owns Gilgamesh.’” – Asymptote Journal
“We are treated to both an introduction AND a translator’s note, which are as accessible and interesting as the text itself, explaining his choices and setting the work in historic context. Hypnotic heroic feats mingle with proto-bromance, featuring the earliest known account of the Great Flood, in this classic myth which is as mesmerizing today as it must have been thousands of years ago.” – Southern Bookseller Review

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

He has published ten collections of poetry and is the author of:

• Four stage plays
• Over a dozen television films
• A libretto
• Two novels
• Three memoirs

His poetry has won numerous awards, including:

• A Gregory Award
• A Forward Prize
• A Lannan Literary Award
• The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry

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