Carcanet Press Logo
Quote of the Day
I'm filled with admiration for what you've achieved, and particularly for the hard work and the 'cottage industry' aspect of it.
Fleur Adcock
Order by 16th December to receive books in time for Christmas. Please bear in mind that all orders may be subject to postal delays that are beyond our control.

Catullus: Shibari Carmina

Isobel Williams

Cover of Catullus: Shibari Carmina
10% off eBook (EPUB)
10% off Paperback
Categories: 21st Century, Ancient Greek and Roman, Art, British, Erotic, First Collections, Humour, Translation, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (112 pages)
(Pub. Mar 2021)
9781800170742
£12.99 £11.69
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Mar 2021)
9781800170759
£10.39 £9.35
Digital access available through Exact Editions
To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions.
  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • 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.'
    Isobel Williams was educated at Woking Girls' Grammar School and Somerville College, Oxford. She blogs about live-drawing, has held solo exhibitions in London and Oslo, and has written for publications ranging from The Amorist to International Journal for the Semiotics of Law . She wrote and illustrated The Supreme Court: a ... read more
    'Explosive and impactful... a compelling and impressive project which translates for us not only the words of these ancient texts, but recontextualises them on the page, drawing out new layers of meaning and allowing us to experience them in new and novel ways.'

    Chrissy Williams, The Poetry Review

    'Williams has served up what is possibly one of the most exciting translation volumes of recent years....The book is alive and breathing.'

    Jemma L King, New Welsh Review 

     'Williams has a terrific ear, both for poetic rhythm and for speech pattterns, and her formal decisions are well-suited to Catullus' manner... Williams is lyrical, funny, engaging, and insightful, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in poetry and in Catullus.'

    Diane Arnson Svarlien, The Classical Outlook

    'Williams has created a bracingly foul, but also a shrewd and funny Catullus'

    Colin Burrow, London Review of Books 

     'Catullus is in the basement, but he's a bit tied up, literally - Isobel Williams' naughty translation puts the Roman poet in a bondage dungeon.'

    Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph Best New Poetry Books 2021

    'Collage and college in one slim course, her little book teaches and teases... Her treatment of selected poems is literary charcuterie as neat as it is naughty. Criticism ceases to be inky assessment and becomes a rally, tease and treat... Shibari Carmina embellishes the literature by looping the poet in a crib spun from and around his own confections. If you fail to enjoy this sado-masochistic gem as much as I have, you can always flog it...'

    Frederic Raphael, The Critic

     'Vibrant new translation... Her art is simple, bold and evocative, and serves to draw out the frank sexuality of many of Catullus' poems.'

    Grace Bartlett, Cherwell

    'Williams's translation covers such a breadth of emotion, including the conflicting and binding pain of love- pathos that can elicit tears and hilarity blended with jarringly puerile vitriol. These emotions are shrouded in words that seem almost like momentarily written notes, and so belie Williams's skill. Each word is perfectly placed and the poems are polished till their burnished edges have lost every hint of their maker's tools.'

    Ed Bedford, The Indiependent

      'It sheds new light on Catullus's struggles as he saw them. It is a striking attempt to present his poems in the moment and is enhanced by the innovative illustrations.'

    Stuart Lyons, Classics For All
     'Williams' translation is the best I've seen by a mile.'

    John Clegg

    Praise for Isobel Williams 'This new version of Catullus certainly contains more than its fair share of lively wit and astonishing originality, but Williams goes much further than others have done in making this very much her own work rather than simply a clever translation of the text. ... This book is extraordinary in every way. It takes poems which we have read many times and makes us see them with fresh eyes. The theme of Shibari is both a unifying feature and also a distancing technique, adding a flavour of the exotic and the bizarre which lurks beneath the all-too familiar surface of this poetry. Switch fizzes with new ideas and forces us to re-read and re-evaluate this most quixotic of poets afresh.'

    John Godwin, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

    'Japanese rope bondage seems an odd way in to Catullus, and these poems are often discomforting or actively shocking: but so is Catullus, especially if you sit down to read right through it... But Williams has found a way to pinpoint what is most distinctive about most of Catullus - a combination of passion with the utmost artifice. I think it's a significant achievement.'

    Victoria Moul, Horace & friends

    'I could go on to discuss the skilful paring of text and images, the many exquisite turns of phrase, or the resonance of the title... to get a sense of what it would have been like for a Roman to first read Catullus's work, buy a copy of this.'

    Ed Beford, Indiependent

        'Razor-edged and completely 2023 - translation in the most vibrant sense. It's often strikingly undergraduate and a welcome riposte to all the doomy codes that seem these days to police every action.'

    Richard Lofthouse, QUAD (Oxford Alumni)

Share this...
The Carcanet Blog Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more PN Review 279: Elegies by Lorna Goodison read more Conjurors: Julian Orde read more Citizen Poet: Eavan Boland read more
Find your local bookshop logo
Arts Council Logo
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
This website ©2000-2024 Carcanet Press Ltd