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Corpus
Corpus - Michael Symmons Roberts' Whitbread-Prize winning fourth collection - centres around the body. Mystical, philosophical and erotic, the bodies in these poems move between different worlds - life and after-life, death and resurrection - encountering pathologists' blades, geneticists' maps and the wounds of love and war. Equally at ease with scripture (Jacob wrestling the Angel in 'Choreography') and science ('Mapping the Genome'), these poems are a thrilling blend of modern and ancient wisdom, a profound and lyrical exploration of the mysteries of the So the martyrs took the lamb./ It tasted rich, steeped in essence/ Of anchovy. They picked it clean/ And found within, a goose, its pink/ Beak in the lamb's mouth like a tongue.' Ranging effortlessly between the physical extremes of death - from putrefaction to purification - and life - drought and flood, hunger and satiation - the poems in Corpus speak most movingly of 'living the half-life between two elements', of what it is to be unique and luminously alive.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 20, 2004
2 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Michael Symmons Roberts
27 books22 followersMichael was born in 1963 and spent his childhood in Lancashire, England before moving south with his family to Newbury in Berkshire in the early ‘70’s. He went to comprehensive school in Newbury, then to Oxford University to read Philosophy & Theology.
After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before joining the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in 1989. He moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last job at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, before he left the BBC to focus on writing.
His 4th book of poetry – Corpus – was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for best collection, and the Griffin International Prize. His 6th collection - Drysalter - was the winner of the 2013 Forward Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
He has previously received the Society of Authors’ Gregory Award for British poets under 30, the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2001 collection Burning Babylon. In 2007 he received a major Arts Council Writers Award.
His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission - The Sacrifice - won the RPS Award for Opera in 2008, and their Royal Opera House / Scottish Opera commission - Clemency - was nominated for an Olivier Award.
His work for radio includes A Fearful Symmetry - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and Last Words commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. His first novel – Patrick’s Alphabet – was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, and his second – Breath – in 2008. He is a trustee of the Arvon Foundation, and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2012 he was made a Fellow of the English Association, for services to the language arts.
He is married with three sons, and lives near Manchester. (source: http://www.symmonsroberts.com/about_l...)
After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before joining the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in 1989. He moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last job at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head of Development for BBC Religion & Ethics, before he left the BBC to focus on writing.
His 4th book of poetry – Corpus – was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for best collection, and the Griffin International Prize. His 6th collection - Drysalter - was the winner of the 2013 Forward Prize and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
He has previously received the Society of Authors’ Gregory Award for British poets under 30, the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for his 2001 collection Burning Babylon. In 2007 he received a major Arts Council Writers Award.
His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has led to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music theatre works and operas for the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Boston Lyric Opera and Welsh National Opera. Their WNO commission - The Sacrifice - won the RPS Award for Opera in 2008, and their Royal Opera House / Scottish Opera commission - Clemency - was nominated for an Olivier Award.
His work for radio includes A Fearful Symmetry - for Radio 4 - which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, and Last Words commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/11. His first novel – Patrick’s Alphabet – was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006, and his second – Breath – in 2008. He is a trustee of the Arvon Foundation, and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2012 he was made a Fellow of the English Association, for services to the language arts.
He is married with three sons, and lives near Manchester. (source: http://www.symmonsroberts.com/about_l...)
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 4, 2020
Second Reading:
Often I find myself struggling to get through the poetry of a collection when it becomes too literary-reference-heavy for me to understand or find much interest in it. This collection never feels that way for me; it’s like a breath of fresh air every time I reread these poems; simple enough in concept, complex enough in originality, relatable in its subject and oh so vivid in its imagery.
Though I honestly love almost every poem in this collection, and there are none I dislike, the standout favourites for me are:
Food for risen bodies series
Carnivorous series
Jairus
Choreography
First Reading:
Micheal Symmons Roberts has very quickly become my favourite poet. I loved so many of his poems in the first selected poems I read, but the majority of them were from this collection or drysalter. I have been recommending him left right and centre, taking every chance I get to read some of his poems to a gathered group of fellows or family. Some of my favourites in this collection are his series 'food for risen bodies'.
Often I find myself struggling to get through the poetry of a collection when it becomes too literary-reference-heavy for me to understand or find much interest in it. This collection never feels that way for me; it’s like a breath of fresh air every time I reread these poems; simple enough in concept, complex enough in originality, relatable in its subject and oh so vivid in its imagery.
Though I honestly love almost every poem in this collection, and there are none I dislike, the standout favourites for me are:
Food for risen bodies series
Carnivorous series
Jairus
Choreography
First Reading:
Micheal Symmons Roberts has very quickly become my favourite poet. I loved so many of his poems in the first selected poems I read, but the majority of them were from this collection or drysalter. I have been recommending him left right and centre, taking every chance I get to read some of his poems to a gathered group of fellows or family. Some of my favourites in this collection are his series 'food for risen bodies'.
July 11, 2017
A truly marvellous collection of poetry - the best overtly religious poetry that I can remember reading for a very long time. Symmons Roberts gives us a metaphysic for the world of genetics. The shade of John Donne can be seen in some of the subject matter -explicitly in the poem "To John Donne"(!) - but the style is (understandably) very different.
Symmons Roberts revels in the corporeality of the Christian faith and in particular the shocking physicality of resurrection - so far from the disembodied spirits of the popular imagination. This is resurrection that needs food, that has its viscera replaced in the stitched-up cadavers. Food For Risen Bodies III is possibly my favourite, with it's striking description of fruit stored away for Doomsday - a dark sweet/ twist of gum, as sharp as scent. The beautiful and elegiac Anatomy of a Perfect Dive summarises and concludes the collection whilst leaving us, like the visitors, standing around wondering exactly what has just happened.
Symmons Roberts revels in the corporeality of the Christian faith and in particular the shocking physicality of resurrection - so far from the disembodied spirits of the popular imagination. This is resurrection that needs food, that has its viscera replaced in the stitched-up cadavers. Food For Risen Bodies III is possibly my favourite, with it's striking description of fruit stored away for Doomsday - a dark sweet/ twist of gum, as sharp as scent. The beautiful and elegiac Anatomy of a Perfect Dive summarises and concludes the collection whilst leaving us, like the visitors, standing around wondering exactly what has just happened.
April 19, 2024
I've been a fan of Michael Symmons Roberts for a lot of years. Corpus is a thoughtful examining of body, essence, and spirit that takes secular language to explore existential and religious themes. He's unafraid to engage with the grit, the felt, the earthly, whilst at the same time, pointing beyond. He tackles inevitability, the disappointedly visceral, and the brutal honesty of the flesh while opening the kind to something more.
Cosmology and The Frequency are good starting points for the sheer beauty of language, and the Food for Risen Bodies mini-cycle.
Cosmology and The Frequency are good starting points for the sheer beauty of language, and the Food for Risen Bodies mini-cycle.
April 22, 2018
Optimus Prime in agony, clouded by mosquitoes.
June 5, 2022
Interesting poems with great subtleties of sound.
September 17, 2022
Euphoria at the edge of the search path that emerges in a consistent story and leads into the reader.
August 24, 2022
A friend recently recommended Michael Symmons Roberts to me and I’m so glad that he did. I started with Corpus, a beautiful, metaphysical, Whitbread Prize winning poetry collection which explores the binaries of humanity and existence - life and afterlife, death and resurrection, science and religion. ‘To John Donne’ riffs off the language of one of my favourite Donne poems, ‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’, in order to explore the discourse around the patenting of the human genome, Food For Risen Bodies Vi uses an epigraph from Pablo Neruda’s ‘White Bee’ (another of my favourite poets!) and ‘Grounded’, my favourite poem in the collection, presents lovers as fallen angels, their shoulder blades now wing stumps, sacrificed to stay the night. All this considered, I really shouldn’t have been surprised that I loved it as much as I did!
October 25, 2008
Very good collection. All of the poems, in one way or another, are focused on issues of embodiment: food, death, the body and soul, etc. He also deals with faith and theology in ways that are creative, non-didactic, and non-apologetic (in both senses of that last term). Delectable! (Also of note: he has a new collection just out, "The Half-Healed.")
January 6, 2016
Powerful short book, where the whole is more than the sum of its parts -- the common themes (of the body, decay, food, resurrection) resonate from poem to poem. Like his other book Drysalter, the impact slowly builds and layers as you read through. A true feast for the mind and spirit, no wonder this won the Whitbread when it was published.
July 15, 2008
Poetry's not usually my bag, man, but this - with its blend of wordplay, science and modern imagery really caught my imagination.
August 8, 2016
Re-read on holiday - as brilliant 2nd time as first
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews