{"product_id":"catullus-shibari-carmina-9781800170742","title":"Catullus: Shibari Carmina","description":"A Telegraph Best New Poetry Books for Christmas 2021. Carcanet publishes several Catulluses: C.H. Sisson's, Len Krisak's, Simon Smith's. But Isobel Williams's Catullus: Shibari Carmina is different in kind from the earlier versions. 'Translating Catullus has been, for me, like cage fighting with two opponents, ' the translator writes: 'not just A Top Poet, but the schoolgirl I was, trained to show the examiner that she knew what each word meant.' The struggle is intensified by the presence of a third element, something that made Catullus come alive, his 'tormented intelligence and romantic versatility'. 'It eventually happened at a fetish venue in South London, The Flying Dutchman - an echo of Catullus's doomed obsessive love? Someone at life class, knowing I like a drawing challenge, had told me about a Japanese rope bondage (shibari) club called Bound. I asked the management if I could draw there; on arrival I was treated like the Queen Mother. Best of all, the schoolgirl was too young to be let in.' The dynamics of shibari released Catullus from conventional constraints and delivered him to new rigours: 'I found context, metaphor and idiom for Catullus - whom one could glibly define as a bisexual switch from the late Roman Republic when such concepts were meaningless: a stern moralist who splits into an anxious bitchy dominant with the boys, a howling sub with his nemesis, the older glamorous married woman he calls Lesbia (here called Clodia, which might have been her real name).' The poet uses the terminology and forms of social media, a very contemporary idiom which is at once subjected to severe scholarship and tight syntactical discipline. All the crucial language knots are firmed up, the sense of the Latin emerges with Catullus's own laughter restored, along with the other registers of love and loss. Isobel Williams's drawings add immediacy to her versions which 'are not (for the most part) literal translations, but take an elliptical orbit around the Latin, brushing against it or defying its gravitational pull.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=AUTH-14148334\"\u003eIsobel Williams\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Carcanet Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/27\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 112\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.30lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.40w x 0.30d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781800170742\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1800170742\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBISAC Categories:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-POE\"\u003ePoetry\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-POE005020\"\u003eEuropean | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e- \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=CAT-POE\"\u003ePoetry\u003c\/a\u003e | \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/sureshotbooks-com.myshopify.com\/search?type=product%2Carticle%2Cpage\u0026amp;q=BISAC-POE024000\"\u003eWomen Authors\u003c\/a\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIsobel Williams\u003c\/b\u003e was educated at Woking Girls' Grammar School and Somerville College, Oxford. She blogs about live-drawing in various locations. She has held solo exhibitions in London and Oslo, written articles for publications ranging from \u003ci\u003eThe Amorist to International Journal for the Semiotics of Law\u003c\/i\u003e, and given talks about her work at conferences in the UK and abroad. She wrote and illustrated \u003ci\u003eThe Supreme Court: a Guide for Bears\u003c\/i\u003e in 2017 and is contributing a chapter to \u003ci\u003eDesign and Visualisation in Legal Educatio\u003c\/i\u003en published by Routledge in 2021.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Carcanet Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":42710595240173,"sku":"9781800170742","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0550\/8097\/6621\/products\/img_db78d916-9e57-4e74-b240-d4f509766451.jpg?v=1650145501","url":"https:\/\/sureshotbooks.com\/products\/catullus-shibari-carmina-9781800170742","provider":"SureShot Books Publishing LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}