What do you think?
Rate this book
Telling Tales
SHORTLISTED FOR THE TED HUGHES PRIZE 2015
Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral,
Poet pilgrims competing for free picks,
Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix
From below-the-belt base to the topnotch;
I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch
when the tales overrun, run offensive,
or run clean out of steam, they're authentic
and we're keeping it real, reminisce
Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business.
In Telling Tales award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired 21st-Century remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's newest collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of Britain's most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.
Tabard Inn to Canterb'ry Cathedral,
Poet pilgrims competing for free picks,
Chaucer Tales, track by track, it's the remix
From below-the-belt base to the topnotch;
I won't stop all the clocks with a stopwatch
when the tales overrun, run offensive,
or run clean out of steam, they're authentic
and we're keeping it real, reminisce
Chaucer Tales were an unfinished business.
In Telling Tales award-winning poet Patience Agbabi presents an inspired 21st-Century remix of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales retelling all of the stories, from the Miller's Tale to the Wife of Bath's in her own critically acclaimed poetic style. Celebrating Chaucer's Middle-English masterwork for its performance element as well as its poetry and pilgrims, Agbabi's newest collection is utterly unique. Boisterous, funky, foul-mouthed, sublimely lyrical and bursting at the seams, Telling Tales takes one of Britain's most significant works of literature and gives it thrilling new life.
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2014
23 people are currently reading
562 people want to read
About the author
Patience Agbabi
20 books42 followersPatience Agbabi (born 1965) is a British poet, author and performer. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Patience Agbabi was born in London to Nigerian parents, and from a young age was privately fostered by a white English family, who when she was 12 years old moved from Sussex to North Wales, where Agbabi was raised in Colwyn Bay. She studied English language and literature at Pembroke College, Oxford.
She earned an MA in Creative Writing, the Arts and Education from the University of Sussex in 2002, and in September that year was appointed Associate Creative Writing Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Agbabi was Canterbury Festival's Laureate in 2010. In 2018 she was Writer In Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Patience Agbabi was born in London to Nigerian parents, and from a young age was privately fostered by a white English family, who when she was 12 years old moved from Sussex to North Wales, where Agbabi was raised in Colwyn Bay. She studied English language and literature at Pembroke College, Oxford.
She earned an MA in Creative Writing, the Arts and Education from the University of Sussex in 2002, and in September that year was appointed Associate Creative Writing Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Agbabi was Canterbury Festival's Laureate in 2010. In 2018 she was Writer In Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews
May 3, 2014
If Chaucer were alive today and spent most of his time battle rapping, this book would be the result. Alive with energy and spunk, these skilled and highly irreverent rhymes are of sufficient quality to do justice to the originals; HOWEVER, somehow the saucy elements of these tales seem EXTRA SAUCY. Perhaps without the mists of Middle English obscuring this reader's view, all elements seem stronger, or perhaps the author chose to turn up the volume on the ribaldry. Either way, gentle readers should be warned. There's some strong stuff here.
June 26, 2018
These poems are gorgeous, inventive, irreverent, and joyous. I loved them. I'd previously read (and taught with) individual poems, but they're a special treat as a collection. I'm not sure why so many reviews seem to characterize them as rap; the genres of poetry represented are diverse, though there is a lot of slam poetry, and the Prioress' Tale is a breathtaking rap. Here, the General Prologue is replaced by a creative, thought-provoking set of author bios as an appendix of sorts. Harry Bailey (and April) get to open and close the collection. Whatever your previous acquaintance with Chaucer, this is worth a read.
July 15, 2021
As someone who teaches Chaucer for a living, I'm wary of adaptations of medieval literature. They usually suck. But this is a fantastic, fantastic collection of poems that reimagines Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a refreshingly modern, multicultural setting while respecting the medieval source material. Agbabi is a brilliant poet with an impressive command of a variety of verse forms (including Chaucerian) and a solid grasp of Chaucer's style and tone. Both the characters and the tales in this collection are inventive and memorable. I can't recommend Agbabi's Telling Tales book highly enough!
October 7, 2024
too much fun to read!! a rap remix of the canterbury tales, telling tales added more passion and liveliness to the harder-to-read middle english poems. loved reading these --- especially out loud and i was more enjoying the read than overanalyzing each line (which was refreshing).
"so we're keeping it real on the papyrus:/all that's written is written to inspire us..."
"so we're keeping it real on the papyrus:/all that's written is written to inspire us..."
March 8, 2015
Favourite poem : What Do Women Like Bes'?
December 24, 2017
I don't usually read poetry but I came across this at a library book sale. I couldn't pass up a modern day version of the Canterbury Tales. This is absolutely genius.
Read
February 29, 2024can’t wait for my 2024 reading challenge to be all 21st century chaucer adaptations
November 8, 2023
wish i knew what the canterbury tales where. didn't and don't
May 15, 2018
Not a very entertaining read. A contemporary poetic re-write of Chaucer's Tales. I don't feel the rap guise suits them very well. Perhaps this is a book that should be performed or read aloud. Reading it in one sitting was not engaging.
December 19, 2018
Agbabi is a great poet and I really like her poems. However that wasn't the case for quite a few poems in this volume. Maybe if I knew the original Canterbury Tales better, some of these poems would make more sense to me.
March 8, 2020
experimental
May 26, 2020
Modern poetry at its best.
February 25, 2024
This is a fascinating concept - a 21st century retelling of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where instead of a group of (white) people telling stories to pass the time on a pilgrimage, it's a group of multidiverse people telling stories in a rap battle/form of slam poetry competition. Each poem/rap is a direct adaption of a Canterbury tale, as Agbabi pays homage to Chaucer while also adding her own lively, sharp style.
I actually didn't need to have read this entire collection (as in my college tutorial we only focused on the Joint Writing story), but I'm really glad that I did.
I didn't love every poem, but some really did stand out to me. I really liked how Agbabi switched between different forms of poetry within the collection, making each poet's voice as unique as their story. I'm leaving my rating at a solid 3.5🌟 as if I was to reread, it would probably be more of a skimming until I got to my favourite parts, which really were great.
Some of my favourite lines:
Prologue-
"there’s days she goes off me, April loves me not; April loves me with a passion, dear doctor, I’m wordsick and I got the itch like I’m allergic but it could be my shirt’s on the cheap side; serenade overnight with my peeps wide, nothing like her, liqueur, an elixir, overproof that she serves as my sick cure"
Emily (The Knight's Tale)-
"I miss him, like a gun to the temple."
"Arc was altered. He won the war but lost the plot."
What Do Women Like Bes'? (The Wife of Bath's Tale)-
"The fifth one I married for love."
That Beatin' Rhythm (The Merchant's Tale)-
"I Love Her So Much (It Hurts Me)."
"When they left, I Just Kept On Dancing but my Shoes got the Cold-Hearted Blues."
Fine Lines (The Squire's Tale)
"You knew blue was my colour
the blue-black of an old tattoo
you drew blood with your sword-pen-gun
I want you back"
"You backstabbed but I healed scabbed
like an oil painting now I’m reflecting
on this old gold ring you left on my finger
the day you left"
I actually didn't need to have read this entire collection (as in my college tutorial we only focused on the Joint Writing story), but I'm really glad that I did.
I didn't love every poem, but some really did stand out to me. I really liked how Agbabi switched between different forms of poetry within the collection, making each poet's voice as unique as their story. I'm leaving my rating at a solid 3.5🌟 as if I was to reread, it would probably be more of a skimming until I got to my favourite parts, which really were great.
Some of my favourite lines:
Prologue-
"there’s days she goes off me, April loves me not; April loves me with a passion, dear doctor, I’m wordsick and I got the itch like I’m allergic but it could be my shirt’s on the cheap side; serenade overnight with my peeps wide, nothing like her, liqueur, an elixir, overproof that she serves as my sick cure"
Emily (The Knight's Tale)-
"I miss him, like a gun to the temple."
"Arc was altered. He won the war but lost the plot."
What Do Women Like Bes'? (The Wife of Bath's Tale)-
"The fifth one I married for love."
That Beatin' Rhythm (The Merchant's Tale)-
"I Love Her So Much (It Hurts Me)."
"When they left, I Just Kept On Dancing but my Shoes got the Cold-Hearted Blues."
Fine Lines (The Squire's Tale)
"You knew blue was my colour
the blue-black of an old tattoo
you drew blood with your sword-pen-gun
I want you back"
"You backstabbed but I healed scabbed
like an oil painting now I’m reflecting
on this old gold ring you left on my finger
the day you left"
October 7, 2024
Entering this into one of my favorite books of all time, and I never saw that coming.
Favorite poems:
"Fine Lines"
"That Beatin' Rhythm"
"What Do Women Like Bes'?"
"Joined-Up Writing"
"The Kiss"
“Sir Topaz vs Da Elephant — Round 3”
“100 chars”
“Animals”
“The Crow”
Favorite poems:
"Fine Lines"
"That Beatin' Rhythm"
"What Do Women Like Bes'?"
"Joined-Up Writing"
"The Kiss"
“Sir Topaz vs Da Elephant — Round 3”
“100 chars”
“Animals”
“The Crow”
February 20, 2024
someone tell me why i took a class on Chaucer adaptations if i don’t like poetry
August 18, 2025
Bold, bawdy and a bit bonkers - I really enjoyed this modern retelling of the Canterbury tales!
July 27, 2020
I really enjoyed this collection, a fresh and engaging take on the Canterbury tales, the unfinished cycle of poems by Geoffrey Chaucer. Retold for the 21st century, this captures the heart of the originals.
Joined-up writing broke my heart, I loved the wife of baths tale 'what do women like bes'?, The physicians tale with its changing text fonts worked well.
I couldn't read the Monk's tale, the text was unreadable to me. Perhaps another time, but not now.
As a bonus feature, Agbabi has included a mini biography for each character in the tales.
This is well worth your time.
Joined-up writing broke my heart, I loved the wife of baths tale 'what do women like bes'?, The physicians tale with its changing text fonts worked well.
I couldn't read the Monk's tale, the text was unreadable to me. Perhaps another time, but not now.
As a bonus feature, Agbabi has included a mini biography for each character in the tales.
This is well worth your time.
October 18, 2019
COMMENT ~
I love poetry. I hate poetry. I love poetry. Poetry is boring. I love poetry. There is not a single poet left alive. I love poetry.
What is the deal with me and poetry anyway? It has to be said, contemporary poetry has been disappointing for the past fifty years. Whether French or English, it has mostly been a rehash of emotional clichés served in inferior form. Most writers wannabes take on poetry because it feels easy. One can simply say whatever comes to mind as it comes. Throw in a couple of black suns, a few burning wings, the odd singing brook and silvery lake and you got yourself a poem.
This is how, in every country, poetry is a vast heap of fertilizer on top of which grows the rarest flower. It takes years to find a voice, a style, and to polish them into an original and meaningful form. Art might, in Patience Agbabi’s words, create beauty out of pain, but it does so through form. Under the absolute, unforgiving dictatorship of form. If you are not ready to submit to it, do not attempt poetry.
95% of poetry is rubbish. And for this reason, 95% of slam and rap is rubbish. I say I don’t like rap. This is not true. I hate 95% of rap. Rap is the most demanding popular genre. It has nothing to cling on to but the text. If the text isn’t perfect, rap is shit. I like punk because 70% of punk music is good. When punk isn’t perfect it is still good. Punk’s raw energy doesn’t need perfection. It doesn’t live well with perfection. Punk is not artistic. Punk is vital. Rap is art. It aspires to perfection and can only be appreciated in its effort to reach it. And rap, whether you like it or not, is poetry.
It is not the only form of contemporary poetry. I still read Mary Ann Duffy and John Burnside. But, for those like me looking for modern forms of poetry they can relate to, slam is definitely the genre to explore. I read Kate Tempest for the first time 5 years ago. Hold Your Own was full of promises – but she was young for an old fox like me. Then came Patience Agbabi.
Were Telling Tales just a modern take on the Canterbury Tales, it would not stand a chance to please my French ears. Chaucer means little to me, as, I am sure, Francois Villon means little to English ears (poetry doesn’t translate well, cliché but true). I discovered Agbabi’s poetry through Refugee Tales. She has extensive vocabulary, flawless rhythm and an angry, fearless heart. She also has, no pun intended, the patience to work these ingredients into small art pieces. As an artist, she writes little. She does not write if she does not have a vision. Vision does not come to the poet like a dove from Heavens. Vision comes to the poet after hours, sometimes days, of meditating on a text: what is it that I am trying to say? How do I want to say it? Each of Agbabi’s poems is supported by a vision. They have internal consistency.
She is also an avid explorer. She does not content herself with the same patterns, the same rhythms. What makes Telling Tales superior to Hold Your Own is the variety Agbabi finds throughout her collection. Using heteronyms, she forges different styles to suit each of them. Some are a challenge to read (e.g 100 char). Some feel uncomfortable, their very short verses turning reading into a physical exercise. All of them demand attention from the reader and bring their reward.
As for the themes: in Telling Tales as in Refugee Tales, Agbabi talks about the violence of poverty. Her texts paint treason rather than love. She is cruel to men and women alike, she makes no excuse for the pettiness of the human race, she depicts a merciless world. Her universe is an ugly, painful one. It is a measure of her talent that we watch her turn it, verse after verse, into beauty.
I love poetry. I hate poetry. I love poetry. Poetry is boring. I love poetry. There is not a single poet left alive. I love poetry.
What is the deal with me and poetry anyway? It has to be said, contemporary poetry has been disappointing for the past fifty years. Whether French or English, it has mostly been a rehash of emotional clichés served in inferior form. Most writers wannabes take on poetry because it feels easy. One can simply say whatever comes to mind as it comes. Throw in a couple of black suns, a few burning wings, the odd singing brook and silvery lake and you got yourself a poem.
This is how, in every country, poetry is a vast heap of fertilizer on top of which grows the rarest flower. It takes years to find a voice, a style, and to polish them into an original and meaningful form. Art might, in Patience Agbabi’s words, create beauty out of pain, but it does so through form. Under the absolute, unforgiving dictatorship of form. If you are not ready to submit to it, do not attempt poetry.
95% of poetry is rubbish. And for this reason, 95% of slam and rap is rubbish. I say I don’t like rap. This is not true. I hate 95% of rap. Rap is the most demanding popular genre. It has nothing to cling on to but the text. If the text isn’t perfect, rap is shit. I like punk because 70% of punk music is good. When punk isn’t perfect it is still good. Punk’s raw energy doesn’t need perfection. It doesn’t live well with perfection. Punk is not artistic. Punk is vital. Rap is art. It aspires to perfection and can only be appreciated in its effort to reach it. And rap, whether you like it or not, is poetry.
It is not the only form of contemporary poetry. I still read Mary Ann Duffy and John Burnside. But, for those like me looking for modern forms of poetry they can relate to, slam is definitely the genre to explore. I read Kate Tempest for the first time 5 years ago. Hold Your Own was full of promises – but she was young for an old fox like me. Then came Patience Agbabi.
Were Telling Tales just a modern take on the Canterbury Tales, it would not stand a chance to please my French ears. Chaucer means little to me, as, I am sure, Francois Villon means little to English ears (poetry doesn’t translate well, cliché but true). I discovered Agbabi’s poetry through Refugee Tales. She has extensive vocabulary, flawless rhythm and an angry, fearless heart. She also has, no pun intended, the patience to work these ingredients into small art pieces. As an artist, she writes little. She does not write if she does not have a vision. Vision does not come to the poet like a dove from Heavens. Vision comes to the poet after hours, sometimes days, of meditating on a text: what is it that I am trying to say? How do I want to say it? Each of Agbabi’s poems is supported by a vision. They have internal consistency.
She is also an avid explorer. She does not content herself with the same patterns, the same rhythms. What makes Telling Tales superior to Hold Your Own is the variety Agbabi finds throughout her collection. Using heteronyms, she forges different styles to suit each of them. Some are a challenge to read (e.g 100 char). Some feel uncomfortable, their very short verses turning reading into a physical exercise. All of them demand attention from the reader and bring their reward.
As for the themes: in Telling Tales as in Refugee Tales, Agbabi talks about the violence of poverty. Her texts paint treason rather than love. She is cruel to men and women alike, she makes no excuse for the pettiness of the human race, she depicts a merciless world. Her universe is an ugly, painful one. It is a measure of her talent that we watch her turn it, verse after verse, into beauty.
January 27, 2020
Read for an English class, I liked the idea of a contemporary retelling of the Canterbury tales, which I am sort of familiar with but haven't read, but as it turned out the parts from Agbabis retelling I enjoyed were really just he original gags from Chaucers tales and so nothing new. Maybe if she had allowed herself more changes to the original it could have been fun but I was mostly bored, which is the worst thing you can be when reading.
April 13, 2019
I tried to find some favourites but there are too many. What do Women like Bes and Tit for Tat and The Kiss of course, such a joyous laugh, but Joined-up Writing made me cry. Glad I met them as a collection because it really brings out the riotous language and feelings. Have to give it back to the library now......
May 11, 2014
Bawdy, saucy and not for the faint of heart. A very foul mouth and a great grasp of words characterise these poems, making Telling Tales incredibly ingenious and well-written, filled with skilful word-play and rhyme, and a great new door to Chaucer's original Canterbury Tales.
July 16, 2014
Often a little hard to follow if you're just reading it, I felt that this book should spoken out loud when reading. The rhythm flowed naturally and in a lyrical sort of way.
I enjoyed the book and if you're a fan of musical poetry, you will enjoy this book.
I enjoyed the book and if you're a fan of musical poetry, you will enjoy this book.
November 5, 2017
I love Agabi's retelling of Chaucer's tales. It's fresh. It's great. It's also interesting what the poet seems to focus on each tale. Some are creative, others are just as tragic. Though I am renting this book for my Chaucer class, I'm really thinking about buying it.
December 20, 2019
Hijinks in high style. There's even a pilgrim born in Singapore, Tim Canon-Yeo, who obtained a Medieval English degree from Oxford and taught TEFL for several years in Colombia, before becoming a personal trainer and bodyguard to paranoid pop stars. Tim resides in Kent and writes a poem a day.
January 23, 2020
This really didn’t hit me in the way i wanted it to. Plenty of poems lose their clarity, forcing rhymes and syllables that lose the structure that Chaucer had. There are some gems here, but I found the collection itself not worth the trawl to get to them.
June 30, 2015
Didn't love it, but I think it's the sort of poetry you need to hear performed.
Read
November 26, 2016Lovely idea, a modern version of the Canterbury Tales, in verse, but the diverse versions of the stories as if told now. Wonderful scansion. I raced through it.
January 7, 2018
Modern rap artists revisit Canterbury: lewd, amusing, poetically diverse tales.
See my other ten word book reviews at my blog: https://tenwordbookreviews.wordpress....
See my other ten word book reviews at my blog: https://tenwordbookreviews.wordpress....
December 15, 2017
Yeah. I need to buy myself a copy of this.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 64 reviews