Book description
Josephine Hart, author of the bestselling novel
Damage
, had what she called 'a long love affair' with poetry. It was an affair
that started as a child and lasted until her untimely death at the age
of sixty-nine in 2011. She said 'I was a word child' growing up in
Ireland 'a country of word children where life was language before it
was anything else'. As a teenager and later she found the poetry of
Eliot, Larkin, Yeats and others a lifeline, 'a route map through life'.
In the late 1980s, Hart, by now a successful West End theatre producer,
began a hugely popular event in which actors read the words of the great
poets to an enraptured audience. In 2004, The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour
moved to the British Library, where it remains today. By her own
admission, Josephine Hart gave 'dead poets society' . But she also gave
them intelligent and exciting introductions; all of which are now
collected here in this volume. They are insightful, even great, works in
their own right.
Life Saving
leaves us an inspiring legacy. It takes us on a journey of the
imagination to some of the greatest poems written in the English
language and allows us to understand, intuitively and deeply, why poetry
matters. Josephine Hart (1942-2011) was the bestselling author of Damage
, Sin
, Oblivion
,The Reconstructionist
and The Truth About Love
. She produced a number of West End plays. As well writing novels, she
was a 'poetry evangelist' and her Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the
British Library inspired two edited poetry books: Catching Life By
the Throat
and Words that Burn
. She was married to Maurice Saatchi and had two sons.
