Audiobook · read by volunteers
Embankment at Night, before the War: Outcasts
D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930)
Read by Annie Coleman Rothenberg, Kymm Zuckert, Fox in the Stars, Martin Clifton, Peter Yearsley · 5 chapters · 26 min
About the book
Night on London’s Embankment, before the First World War: D. H. Lawrence’s poem draws a gritty yet sensitive picture of urban poverty, looking at the outcasts of a great and prosperous capital. It is a long poem for the weekly poetry project, some ninety-six lines, and it asks its readers what they see when they look at poverty. Here five volunteers each read the entire piece, so that you can hear how differently one text can be carried across so many lines. Each version runs only a few minutes, and together the set lasts about twenty-five minutes. Lawrence, the son of a Nottinghamshire miner, is remembered above all for his novels, but he wrote poetry all his life, and this early piece shows him at his most observant. A powerful, thought-provoking set for anyone who thinks of Lawrence only as a novelist.
Introduction
David Herbert Lawrence, who lived from 1885 to 1930, was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, the son of a coal miner. He is best known as a novelist, the author of Sons and Lovers, The Rainbow and Women in Love, but he also wrote poetry throughout his career. Embankment at Night, before the War: Outcasts evokes a gritty yet sensitive picture of urban poverty before the First World War. It is a much longer selection than the short poems that are usually chosen for LibriVox’s weekly poetry project, running to some ninety-six lines.
The recording belongs to the project’s Weekly Poem of May 20th, 2006. On that occasion five volunteers took on the longer text, and their readings follow one another. Together they last about twenty-five minutes.
Because the poem is long, the differences between readers are particularly interesting. A single voice must carry the shifting rhythm across many lines, and each volunteer solves the problem a little differently. One may emphasise the harshness of the scene, another its pity. You can listen to just one version and take in the whole poem, or compare several to see how interpretation changes meaning.
The poem is rooted in a particular time and place, but its concern for those on the margins of a wealthy society has not aged. Lawrence died in 1930, aged only forty-four, and the poems he left fill a thick volume of their own. If you would like to hear a different side of an author usually associated with his novels, this is a short and rewarding way to do so.
Public domain
D. H. Lawrence died in 1930: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text