Catulla Et Al

The poetic sequence which makes up the bulk of this collection is an original approach to the tradition of ‘creative adaptation’. These poems give a contemporary voice to the formal and rhetorical conventions of Latin neoteric poetry, fusing the distinctive but mutually exclusive Catullan qualities of lyric plangency and bitter satire into an ambivalent and uneasy modern’ lovers’ discourse’. These poems take place in a landscape which is a palimpsest of both ancient Rome and contemporary Aberystwyth. The collection as a whole stretches the lyric poem to accommodate irreconcilable frictions: embarrassment, for example, is a key emotional tone throughout.