The Music of the Prophets: The Resettlement of the Jews in England, 1655-56

In 1290 the Jews were banished from England. In 1655-56, Jews once more became a part of British society, returning to the London of Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Pepys and Henry Purcell. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of this return, Michelene Wandor has written a sensuous dramatic narrative poem, evoking seventeenth-century London, and telling the story of the two men who made this return possible: Cromwell and Menasseh Ben Israel.

Music of the Prophets is the third in a sequence of long poems celebrating the presence of the Jews in England. The text seduces and challenges with a delicacy and flow, combining open-form experiment with a musical delight in counterpoint, irony and wit.

Of Michelene Wandor's previous poetry collection, Musica Transalpina (a Poetry Book Society Recommendation) , Judith Kazantizis wrote: "Music Transalpina... has a depth of historical and cultural understanding unusual in contemporary British poetry."

Paperback
60 pages
ISBN-10: 1 904614 63 9
ISBN-13: 978 1604614 63 0
Published March 2007

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