CATULLUS: SELECTED LYRIC POEMS
Richard Whitaker & Douglas Reid Skinner (translators)
October 2020
86pp
130mm x 200mm
ISBN: 978-0-620-88838-7
DISTRIBUTED ON BEHALF OF CRANE RIVER
The Roman poet Catullus (84–54 BCE) ranks among the great lyric poets, one whose writing has echoed down the centuries and remains as relevant and interesting today as it was in its own time. His poems are fashioned out of intense feeling that still thrills, moves, shocks, entertains and delights.
This selection of poems from his small extant body of work aims to show how – whether he composes a tender love lyric to his mistress or a boyfriend, an abusive attack on a politician or literary rival, an address to an intimate friend, a vitriolic or obscene satire, or an occasional piece on some small incident of social life – Catullus is deeply engaged with his subject, a writer passionate about his craft, and fully in touch with the centuries of Greek and Roman poetry that came before him.
Richard Whitaker took degrees in Classics (Greek and Latin) at the Universities of the Witwatersrand, Oxford and St Andrews. He has published extensively on Roman love poetry, oral poetry, and the influence of the Classics on twentieth-century literature, and has translated books from Ancient Greek, Latin and French. His locally flavoured translations of Homer’s Iliad (2012) and Odyssey (2017) are prescribed texts at several South African universities. He is Emeritus Professor of Classics at the University of Cape Town, and a Contributing Editor of the poetry magazine Stanzas.
Douglas Reid Skinner has published six collections of poems, most recently, Liminal (2017). Alone or with an associate, he has published eight books of translation, most recently Poesie Scelte: Selected Poems, translated from the Italian of Marco Fazzini (2020). He directed The Carrefour Press from 1988 to 1992 and was the editor of New Contrast from 1990 to 1992. He is the editor of Stanzas poetry magazine, and the English editor of and a translator for the AVBOB Poetry Project.