In 1985, Gary Geddes won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, Americas Region, for The Terracotta Army, a brilliant sequence of his Chinese sonnets. The nine-couplet poems were inspired by his 1981 visit to the archaeological site in China where more than 8,000 individually sculpted, life-sized soldiers and horses were interred in the third century to accompany Emperor Ch'in Shi Huang Di into the afterlife.
In this ideologically charged volume, Geddes gives voice to a few soldiers, who engage in myriad debates about the abuse of power, the yin-yang dance of narrative and silence, and the sanctity of the idiosyncratic self in the face of conformity.
This new edition of The Terracotta Army, published to coincide with the Canadian tour of The Warrior Emperor and China's Terracotta Army, opening at the ROM in late June 2010, pairs Geddes' poems with photographs of the terracotta soldiers.
"Geddes's accessible poetic style brings to life a rich array of characters inspired by a blend of history, culture, myth, and imagination. ... his two most recent collections offer the reader a point of entry into the inner workings of old China by bringing to life a thronging diversity of voices tinged with both creativity and lore. ... In The Terracotta Army, art has the power to write humanity into existence and yet, in Geddes's grounded and lyrical world, it is ultimately as delicate and frail."
This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.