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What does it mean to write and perform bardic poetry in the twenty-first century? This monumental collection, from the author of The Bardic Handbook and The Way of Awen, brings together 25 years of selected verse to explore that challenge. The diverse range of poems can be enjoyed for their own sake and will also inspire others to craft and voice their own creative responses to identity, ecology, and community, grounded in the body, the land, and conviction. Silver Branch includes an introduction to the author's practice as a performance poet, originally published as Speak Like Rain, along with the Bardic-Chair-winning poem Spring Fall; Bio*Wolf; Green Fire; Dragon Dance; The Taliesin Soliloquies; Thirteen Treasures; poems from the stage shows Arthur's Dream, Robin of the Wildwood, Return to Arcadia, and Song of the Windsmith; plus more recent bardic poems and songs.
About the author
Kevan Manwaring won the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon (Bath) in 1998 and became a professional storyteller in 2000. He is a founding member of Fire Springs and per-forms with his partner, Chantelle Smith, in the duo Bríghíd's Flame. He is the author of The Bardic Handbook (2006), The Way of Awen: journey of a bard (2010); Desiring Dragons: creativity, imagination and the writer's quest (2014); Ox-fordshire Folk Tales (2012), Northamptonshire Folk Tales (2013), Lost Islands: inventing Avalon, destroying Eden (2010), the Windsmith Elegy fantasy series (2004-12), and over a dozen collections of poetry. He is the editor of Ballad Tales (2017) and blogs and tweets as the Bardic Academic.
