Beowulf

CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN POETRY BOOKS OF 2022

LONGLISTED FOR THE RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD

hwt, another Beowulf translation? Not exactly...

Welcome to Denmark's Heorot Hall, where King Hrothgar invites to his banquet table everyone but Grendel, Saxon's cradle-made monster. Dissing this ur-outsider initiates a predictable and monstrous backlash, a Medival fracas that only the eponymous Beowulf can quash. Sailing across the whaleroads, he arrives to "quell and queltch and quatch the Grendel beast."

Beowulf, that still-recognizable hero, embodies a "blank" function, a motive-driven yet motiveless megastar. He's the young, fit, male, self-sacrificing protagonist-interloper who will fight any monster to protect his people. Or to defend strangers. Or to gain a reputation. Or because he just really wants to...

In her rendering of Beowulf, Nicole Markoti offers a rollicking cover song of fantastical text. These pages will surprise readers as they introduce new ways to embrace, challenge, or click with Anglo-Saxon heroics. Writing original poems, Markoti de-stories the story of one man, who mostly does not play well with others, who fights monsters (and defeats their mothers, too), and who practically invents the poetic tradition of entitled bravery.

Upending the tale with her fresh and enchanting style, Markoti gives a nod to previous translations, winks at canonical critics, bares historical biases, all while gifting transmogrifying pages that will whet your whimsy!

"Nicole Markoti takes the original English-language epic and reprocesses it. That is, she rereads, rewrites, reimagines, rethinks, and retells it, all at the same time. The result is the story re-understood. The phrasing and incantation is Markoti's own (and our era's own), deployed with deliciously textured and diverse registers of language. Blake saw infinity in the palm of his hand. Markoti puts a millennium in yours."-Wayde Compton, author ofThe Outer Harbour

"Beowulf, with its unfathomable monsters and monster-slaying hero, its bro world of mead, boasting, weapons, and booty, remains a stubbornly relevant template for much of our contemporary scene. Nicole Markoti's After BeowulfBob Perelman, author ofJack and Jill in Troy

-Jacqueline Turner, author of Flourish

“"Beowulf has been translated time and time again, whether by scholars just trying to be as accurate as possible, or people thinking outside of the box, or people who literally are just here for a good time like Nicole. After Beowulf is the tale of Beowulf, but it does address why the Geats were so terrified of his death. Nicole just happens to tell it all in the funkiest, funniest way possible. It even had me reading it out loud at one point, trying to do funny voices and keep up with the flow." - Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the The Southern Bookseller Review "An irreverent romp and, paradoxically, a work of scholarship." - Barb Carey, The Toronto Star "Reworking one of the earliest of epic poems through English and Danish traditions, there is a swagger to Markotic's lyric, one propelled by both character and the language, writing a collage of sound and meaning, gymnastic in its application and collision." - rob mcclennan”

"Beowulf has been translated time and time again, whether by scholars just trying to be as accurate as possible, or people thinking outside of the box, or people who literally are just here for a good time like Nicole. After Beowulf is the tale of Beowulf, but it does address why the Geats were so terrified of his death. Nicole just happens to tell it all in the funkiest, funniest way possible. It even had me reading it out loud at one point, trying to do funny voices and keep up with the flow." –Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the The Southern Bookseller Review

"An irreverent romp and, paradoxically, a work of scholarship."  –Barb Carey, The Toronto Star

"Reworking one of the earliest of epic poems through English and Danish traditions, there is a swagger to Markotić’s lyric, one propelled by both character and the language, writing a collage of sound and meaning, gymnastic in its application and collision."  – rob mcclennan

Nicole Markoti has written four poetry books, three novels, a critical collection of essays on disability in film and literature, and has edited several volumes of critical and creative work. Currently, she is Professor of Creative Writing, Children's Literature, and Disability Studies at the University of Windsor.

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