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

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

by Michelene Wandor

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."

What is arresting about Michelene Wandor's new collection are its sustained evocations of Renaissaince artistry... imagistic, marvellously cadenced lines...

Martin Stoddard, Jewish Chronicle, January 19th 2007

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

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