Modern Poetry Anthology
Among Ralph Windle's many humorous works of modern british poetry, can be found "The Bottom Line: A Book of Boardroom Ballads", an illustrated poetry anthology. Also see "The Poetry of Business Life". This popular, satirical and humorous anthology of business poems is available to buy internationally from www.amazon.com and locally from www.amazon.co.uk: modern poetry anthology
Modern british poetry
Ralph Windle is admired and enjoyed by many, internationally, for his modern British poetry and poetry about business. Although a British poet, his modern poetry is enjoyed globaly for its poetic comedy, sharp wit and humorous edge. His illustrated poetry anthology and several modern British poetry anthologies are available to buy from Amazon.
Bellow you will find the testaments by numerous professionals to Ralph's humor and depth of insight, and can hear what they have to say about this wonderful and inspirational modern poetry anthology...
The Poetry of Business Life
An Anthology by Ralph Windle
A unique collection of voices, this anthology brings together, for the first time, poems by contemporary corporate people and more recognized literary figures in and around the expanding world of business.
Over seventy writers bring fresh insights into the corporate life we know, with evocative glimpses of its origins-back to the Greek poets of 500 B.C.
This unique collection brings together poems by contemporary corporate people and more recognized literary figures in and around the expanding world of business. Included are young, unpublished "business poets," well-known contemporary writers such as James Autry, Harry Newman, and Dana Gioia, as well as some of the most distinguished poets in history such as Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Kipling.
Love, death, religion, relationships-these subjects typically inspire collections of poetry. But business? Most people think of business and poetry as two separate and incompatible areas of life.
In February 1991, Alan Farnham expressed this common belief when he wrote in Fortune Magazine, "Not many people in business feel an urge to write verse about their work." Challenged by this statement, Ralph Windle began a three-year search for the poetry of business life-and found a profusion of verse exploring all aspects of business.
The author's research revealed that not only is there a large body of business poetry in existence today, but business has been the subject of poems since the invention of the written word. The poems in this collection range from early "agribusiness" to the ever-present entrepreneur, merchant, banker, and-with the coming of the industrial age-the worker and manager; right up to twentieth-century concerns with global travel, technology, and the complexities of office life. Included are the works of more than seventy poets, and twice that many pieces. Young, unpublished "business poets" rub elbows with widely published contemporary writers such as James Autry, Harry Newman, and Dana Gioia, as well as some of the most distinguished names in poetic literature-including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Tennyson, and Kipling.
With poems that cover a wide variety of topics and professions-from David Alpaugh's "A California Adman Celebrates His Art" to Richard Ellis Roberts' "Overheard at the Literary Party"; from Constance Alexander's "Outplacement Blues" to Bertie Ramsbottom's "Death By Merger"-this anthology offers something for every reader.
In an age when most people spend the majority of their waking lives involved in some kind of business, it seems natural that poetry, which is the essence of human emotional records, would be affected by business concerns. Business, writes the author, "now touches all our lives and consumes, for ever growing numbers of us, our work, time, energies and passions. Yet few, it is supposed, could find inspiration in its banalities." The size and scope of The Poetry of Business Life easily prove this supposition wrong. Many contemporary business people write verse about their experiences-serious and humorous-as they seek an outlet for their creativity. Business people and their organizations mutually gain from this expression by sending signals to the world that human sensitivities are highly compatible with effective business performance. Humor, insight, sadness, wisdom, and anger are all represented in this unique collection and offer a dynamic, living picture to all people in organizations, their families, and the wider professions as well. Business speech-writers, too, will find in it a rich treasure-trove of choice quotations.
"I wish I could steal into corporate headquarters all across the country and replace every one of those dreadful pop management books with collections like this one. It would greatly humanize American business." - Across the Board
"The Poetry of Business Life a sheer pleasure to read, a gold-mine of quotations for the corporate speech-writer, and the perfect answer for those seeking an ideal business gift. As poetry best can, the book releases those emotional aspects of business life which find little expression in the narrow language of balance sheets and accounting arithmetic. This is a book which everyone in business can enjoy, and really should read." European Journal of Management
What They Have Said About
Bertie Ramsbottom...
'Poet Laureate of the Boardroom, Bertie Ramsbottom's verses have caught the imagination of Financial Times readers the world over.'
Financial Times
'I much enjoy your writings. Bertie is in circulation among my colleagues on campus...'
Professor Michael Porter
Harvard Business School
'We agree with Bertie's admirers. These pieces are delightful.'
Harvard Business Review
'Congratulations on this truly outstanding contribution to "management literature" as it is so pompously termed.'
Hugh Parker
Director, Business International Inc.
'They're absolutely stunning! More please! Bertie is in glorious spate - all the best for your sane singing!'
Sir Peter Parker
Chairman, Mitsubishi UK
'Bertie Ramsbottom had indeed come to my notice but I had not cracked his disguise. Congratulations! Wit seems to me a much neglected aid to management learning.'
Charles Handy
Writer, Broadcaster 'Thought For The Day'
'Bertie Ramsbottom does not appear in Foyles' list of living poets, but for my money he is the next poet laureate of The Institute of Personnel Managers. He is succinctly saying what has in the past required learned tomes.'
Mike Abrahams
Marks & Spencer plc
'What George Kaufman was to Broadway, Bertie Ramsbottom is to the Business world... '
Samuel Steinberg
Womens Wear Daily, New York
'Nothing else has pleased me more than your books. I keep them out in the living room and read some every night... '
Professor J K Galbraith
Boston, USA
'An unforgettable medley. We found it wise, stimulating and funny. Very funny...'
Christine Large
Epigram.
London Director, Bletchley Park
'How original, interesting, relevant and appropriate your verses are! All of them are evidence of a fine gift for satire and a sensitiveness to the foibles of our society.'
Senator William Fulbright
Washington D.C.
'Bertie Ramsbottom's satirical poems on the makers and shakers of big business soon convinced me that humour is not dead... '
Woodrow Geier
Nashville Tennessean
'Bertie is an extraordinarily clever chap... and I'm a great believer in the power of wit!'
Robert Reich
Harvard Professor, Former US Secretary for Labor
'When it comes to poetry, Bertie has established a genre all his own... '
George MacBeth
Former Poetry Producer, B.B.C. Radio.
Leading British poet and novelist
'How can we begin to thank you for such a tremendous evening at the Savoy? The joyful reverberations are still sounding about my ears from all who attended, at your professionalism and the sheer brilliance of your performance... '
Lucy Thellusson
Saxton Bampfylde plc, London
'...this humour, artistry and business sense, is a combination unequalled since Mark Spade.'
Sir Alec Cairncross
Former Master of St. Peter's College, Oxford
'At the Christmas lunch one of the Directors read out - at the Chairman's behest - your "Corporate Prayer" to roars of laughter. You really have a hit on your hands!'
Desmond Graves
Non-Executive Director, George Wimpey plc
'Bertie. Thank you for an extraordinary performance at the Oxford Senior Managers Development Programme'.
Arne Christensen
Datacentraler, Denmark
'Bertie Ramsbottom has established his reputation as the wry and witty chronicler of business life'.
Aidan Stowe
The Oxford Mail
'All graduate students would be well advised to heed the sagely wit of Bertie Ramsbottom's Boardroom Ballads. Bertie's is certainly a refreshing view after the dreary iterations of academia.'
Elizabeth Luber
Campus Magazine
American Grad School of International Management, Arizona
'Wonderful... couldn't be better!'
David Ewing
Former Managing Editor
Harvard Business Review<
'I've read some of Bertie's ramblings... . . I find them absolutely hilarious!'
Sir Gordon Brunton
Former President International Thomson
'I have many times performed Bertie pieces at my own readings in the USA; nor have I missed the substantial messages beneath... '
James Autry
Former President, Meredith Magazine Corporation
USA Author 'Love and Profit'
What They Have Said About
The Poetry of Business Life...
'Undoubtedly one of the most politically incorrect books for a long time, and a breath of fresh air as a result.
This is a book that impresses throughout...
makes its point in a particularly innovative way...
A treasure trove of quotations.'
'Jeremy Kourdi'
Professional Manager
Institute of Management
'I wish I could steal into corporate headquarters all across the country and replace every one of those pop-management books with collections like this one. It would greatly humanize American business. Poetry has a way of making life and work meaningful - something that the management 'gurus' have not yet stumbled upon.'
Ted Kooser
'Across The Board'
Journal of the Conference Board - USA
'Another line I remember from Anthony and Cleopatra is "I yet have room for six Scotches more". This, I am sure, is what people will feel when they read this volume. Anything to stop people feeling there is one world called Art, that their imagination rules; and another called Management Life, reduced to a ratio. I am for the Ralph Windle line.'
Sir Peter Parker
Chairman, Mitsubishi U.K.
'Well, you'd be surprised. Across the Management Page desk comes an anthology, The Poetry of Business Life, whose revelatory function is to assert the neglected truth that the world of work is not something separate from everyday life but a fundamental part of it.'
The Observer
Simon Caulkin, Management Page Editor
'Those who say that poetry and business are incompatible should get hold of this splendid anthology, edited by Ralph Windle, whose own poetry appeared in the Financial Times and elsewhere under the name Bertie Ramsbottom.
It is an extraordinarily successful anthology ranging from the Greek poets of 500 BC through to modern poets such as W.H. Auden, Ogden Nash and Peter Porter. It includes some splendid poems by American Dana Gioia, formerly Marketing Vice President, General Foods...
It manages to be exceptionally fresh, moving and of a high literary standard.'
Freedom Today
Michael Ivens C.B.E.
Society of British Poets
'The anthology reached me on my arrival back from Italy. I have been devouring it in bed ever since, and I have to report that it keeps me awake long after I should have turned on my side! It is splendidly conceived, organised and delivered, and there are lots of lovely gems; few shine as lightly as your own. Congratulations! I hope it sells and sells and sells, thus bringing a bit of cultivation to the arid deserts of too many of our businesses.'
From the best-selling author of 'The Age of Unreason' and 'The Writer, broadcaster. Empty Raincoat': Charles Handy
Visiting Professor, London Business School.
Former Faculty Fellow, Sloan School of Management, USA
'This little book should be in every corporate library in the land. The Poetry of Business Life is a collection of poetry reflecting the agony, the elation, the absurdity, and the tedium of business life. Money, markets, work, power, corporate life, and commuting are all allotted their slot.'
Business Information Review
USA, 1998
'Three years ago this column noted that good poems about business were thin on the ground, and serious ones probably non-existent. Readers did however rally to the help of Ralph Windle who was putting together an anthology of business poetry to prove me wrong.
Ralph has proved his point. The Poetry of Business Life includes poems from the shop-floor to the boardroom. Totally unknown poets rub shoulders with Auden and Betjeman. Business mandarins such as Sir Jeremy Morse and Sir Nicholas Goodison make their bow as poets. Money and markets, politics and power are all celebrated in poetry of surprising verve and power.
Warmest congratulations on pulling it off.'
The Sunday Times
Godfrey Smith Columnist and Wit
'The editor's eye for the literary quality of the poems is acute... The contemporary selections by men and women who are themselves employed in business are particularly moving, and they carry a weight of authenticity that their fellows will recognise. This book should appeal not only to poetry readers, but to those who desire a deeper view of the interior life of people at work.
It's a needed addition to two genres: poetry anthologies and business writing.'
University of California at Berkeley
Professor Roy Doughty
Founder, Global Insights.
Center for Ethics and Social Policy
'The Poetry of Business Life, edited by Ralph Windle is an unusual collection on every aspect of business life, serious and humorous, the results of a three year search.
We list it among books that, because of their uniqueness, special features or different approach could have a better-than-average chance of being noticed.'
The Bookseller
Ones to watch
'Ralph Windle's The Poetry of Business Life, unearths a bevy of businessmen and women who, inspired by their working lives, have felt the urge to express themselves in verse. It has taken Windle three years to put this book together and the result is a highly readable collection, written with humour and occasional anger, which reveals the human side of people in the worlds of business and finance. It is full of delightful vignettes... '
Securities and Investment Review
Clare Beesley
Poets at Work
'There is absolutely nothing else like it! I am impressed by the scope and depth of the volume.
I read through the table of contents with the growing conviction that this could be the book on the subject.
It brings together all sorts of work that people don't know or haven't connected. The introduction is also fine - straight forward, frank and personal.
At any event, bravo! Both business people and literary people should see it. A superb book .'
Prize-winning writer of 'The Gods of Winter' and 'Daily Horoscope'
Dana Gioia
Chairman Federal Endowment for the Arts, USA
'I love this anthology, it was such a splendid idea to put it together. I very much like the light and shade in the contributions selected; wish I'd had copies of Outplacement Blues for the group of 'outplaced' executives I was with last Friday. It captures the anger (with themselves and their company) and fear (of life after the job) so many of them expressed.
The Bertie Ramsbottom poems have a bitter-sweet character - combining humour with really sharp insight.'
Michael Robinson Producer and Presenter
The Money Programme
BBC TV
'This anthology is a delight, and may it do very well in all ways. A brilliant stroke to realise business poetry was a largely untouched, uncollected theme; and it aspires to the condition of a work of reference as well as a poetry anthology.'
Acumen
William Oxley
Former City Accountant, Writer, critic.
'Here at last, to join distinguished verse anthologies on every conceivable subject - the first international collection of the poetry of business life!
The book is entertaining, a sheer pleasure to read, a gold-mine of quotations for the corporate speech writer. But cumulatively it builds a compellingly different picture of what business is really like for the people in it. As poetry best can, it releases those emotional aspects of business life which find little expression in the narrow language of balance sheets and accounting arithmetic.
This is a book which everyone in business can enjoy and should read. It also crosses the boundaries of the 'business book' into the wider literature of quality and style.'
European Management Journal
Inge Adams
Ecole des Affaires de Paris (E.A.P.)
Paris Oxford Berlin
'Your anthology is marvellous - and I have read it from cover to cover. What a tour-de-force of scholarship, experience, wisdom and true wit you've managed to combine in a unique work. Some stick in the mind, refusing to be elbowed away by daily phenomena. Loved Death by Merger and glad to see AT and T's de-merger antidote has taken in its lesson.
This must have taken years to assemble and collect - and the art of production, type and layout are first class.'
Henry M Boettinger
Former First Vice President and Director, Office of Information Technology,
E F Hutton, Europe;
Vice President AT&T, Corporate Policy, USA.
