BITER

I fell in love I kissed gains made it all happened I am desired

but I? and you? and how? one god alone knows

— ‘One God’ from Palatine Anthology V.51 — Anonymous

Filled with hickeys, puttanesca and tart wit, BITER is an apt title for Claudia Jardine’s debut collection of verse. Fresh translations of erotic Greek epigrams are threaded through boozy sonnets, ecstatic odes and startlingly vulnerable love poems. Jardine weaves ancient and modern together into a rich, glitzy, idiosyncratic tapestry – and in doing so crafts a poetic voice that is at once classical and frisky.