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 this:

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.