Tom Lowenstein: Ancestors and Species –New & Selected Ethnographic Poetry
Published October 2005
Paperback, 154pp, 9x6ins, £9.95 / $17
ISBN 9780907562740
Tom Lowenstein's work as poet and as ethnographer (specialising, above all, in the Inuit of Alaska) has always been interpenetrative, the poetic work deeply informed by the scholarly. This volume selects poetry from his whole career to date, concentrating on the faultline where his ethnographic concerns meet his poetic concerns. Ancestors and Species makes it clear that Tom Lowenstein is one of Britain's most remarkable poetic voices, fascinating and impossible to categorise.
'Tom Lowenstein is an original among young British poets—quite exceptionally gifted . . .' Ted Hughes wrote in 1980.
Part 1 of this selection comes from Filibustering in Samsara, published by The Many Press in 1987. Part 2 contains the poems from Ancient Land : Sacred Whale that evoke hunting ritual, shamanistic initiation and the Inuit whale cult. The final section draws from a long poem-in-progress—part comedy, part meditation—based on the author's experience in northwest Alaska in the mid-1970s.
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