Fire, Blood and the Alphabet

This volume celebrates the life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca, Spain's greatest modern poet and dramatist. The contributors are a stimulating blend of academics, poets, and theatre professionals, all responding in a variety of ways to the creative challenges of Lorca's legacy.

Alan Lyddiard and other directors discuss staging Lorca's plays. The celebrated artist and stage designer Frederic Amat talks about his filming of Lorca's surrealist screenplay Voyage to the Moon. Professor Paul Julian Smith of the University of Cambridge and other academic specialists discuss the continuing vitality of Lorca's poetry, theatre, and paintings.

Experienced translators talk about the problems and opportunities in translating Lorca's poems and plays, and take up the creative challenge of producing adaptations of a single sonnet, 'Wounds of Love'. There is also a translation of an ode to Lorca by Pablo Neruda and contributions by leading poets Brendan Kennelly, Merryn Williams, and John Clifford.