Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Simon Armitage

This is a modern interpretation of an old english poem. Armitage explains that although some of the language would be recognisable to us in context much would seem nonsense to anyone except a scholar of English.

And it works. The poem is remarkable, scintillating in its brilliance and the success of this project is that you don't see Armitage's hand at work but instead I felt (with one minor minor exception when the word 'mega' finds its way into the text) that the work breathed its own life in modern idiom.

The subject is well known, although I realised I'd imbibed perhaps a little too much from films and comics and knew less of the actual story than I supposed. Yet for all its familiarity it is surprising too. The suggestion of rape, between Gawain and his belle dame sans merci, being an acceptable action and his gentle rebuttal is just one example of both familiar and alien modes of thought coming together in profound ways.

I think more than the story or the translation, the poem itself, the meter, the construction and the light touch with which the original author built their lyrics is magnificent. It's common for each sentence to have two forms of alliteration, for rhymes to work on the hard syllable and for common or vulgar actions to find ease and comfort in the text.

This poem breathes in the modern style and the reader is rewarded with the flowering of ancient minds and ancient hearts. Superb.