Gaius Valerius Catullus 
The Books of Catullus 

The Books of Catullus is the first full English translation to take the Roman poet at his word. Simon Smith’s versions are scholarly yet eccentric, mapping theme and register to contemporary equivalents (such as poem 16, which echoes Frank O’Hara). He divides Catullus’s complete verses into three ‚books‘, the form in which it is thought the poems were originally received. ‚Smith gets the all-important rhythm of Catullus, whose meters, like all else about this poet, are deceptively complex‘, writes Vincent Katz. ‚He achieves a delicious frisson again and again by fusing the classical and the contemporary. The reader is repeatedly pleasured by unexpected felicities.‘ (Peter Hughes)

Über den Autor

Simon Smith has published five collections of poetry. His third collection, Mercury (Salt), was long-listed for the Costa Prize in 2007. A selected poems, More Flowers Than You Could Possibly Carry, appeared from Shearsman in 2016, and his latest pamphlet is Salon Noir (Equipage, 2016). He is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow in 2009, and a judge of the National Poetry Prize in 2004. He holds a Ph D from the University of Glasgow.