Alice Oswald’s debut explores poetry’s oral tradition from Homer to Hughes
Alice Oswald's debut prose work "Rhapsody: A Manifesto" offers a wide-ranging exploration of poetry centred on the concept of the oral tradition, from classical Greek rhapsodes through Homer to the contemporary world. Presented as an urgent manifesto, the book positions poetry as a living phenomenon that transcends rhetoric and fashion, searching for those moments where poetry genuinely "happens" in performance and language.
Structured across ten chapters and blending Oswald's own translations with work by Shakespeare, Donne, Shelley and Ted Hughes, the book draws praise for its lyrical beauty and sophisticated insights into poetry as performance. However, reviewers note a significant limitation: the work largely excludes living contemporary poets and risks becoming a manifesto only for performing existing works rather than engaging with poetry being written today.
- Oswald's debut explores what makes poetry work through history of the oral tradition
- Praised for lyrical beauty and performance insights; criticised for neglecting contemporary voices
- A manifesto that risks being about past poetry rather than present creation
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Alice Oswald is a poet who has published her first prose work, a book called "Rhapsody: A Manifesto". The book explores the oral tradition in poetry—the idea that poetry has primarily existed as a performed, spoken art form rather than as written words on a page.
Oswald traces this tradition from ancient Greek poetry through Homer, Shakespeare, Donne and Shelley to modern poets like Ted Hughes, examining how these works have been performed aloud across centuries. She includes her own translations to argue that poetry is fundamentally an art of voice and performance rather than silent reading.
Understanding poetry's relationship to the spoken word and performance offers a new way of thinking about what poetry is and how it functions. The concept of the oral tradition remains central to how poetry operates, even as it has changed from ancient times to the present day.
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Originally published by The Guardian as “Rhapsody: A Manifesto by Alice Oswald review – a history of the spoken word, from Homer to Ted Hughes”.