Alice Oswald on Rhapsody: A Manifesto

A daring, genre-defying work of non-fiction from one of our greatest poets

Alice Oswald goes in search of poetry in its original, wildest form - before it was written down, before it belonged to a single voice - and finds it still speaking all around us.

What begins as an attempt to 'interview' Homer becomes a thrilling exploration of an anonymous tradition that exists beyond authorship, spanning a world of singers, storytellers, mourners and listeners, of nightingales, grasshoppers and rivers.

Zigzagging through ballads, riddles, pibrochs, drama, interviews, artificial intelligence and sonnets, Rhapsody is a restless, miraculous exploration of poetry in its most vital form, and a resounding manifesto for the oral tradition.

At once intimate and expansive, Oswald invites us to listen to the voices that shape us, and to recognise poetry not as a solitary, written art, but as a communal, essential human inheritance.

Alice Oswald lives in Devon and has published several poetry collections, including Dart - a long poem about a river - and Memorial, a version of Homer's Iliad. She has been awarded the T.S Eliot Prize, Forward Poetry Prize, Griffin Poetry Prize and Costa Poetry Award. She was Oxford professor of Poetry between 2019 and 2024.