Living classics Greece and Rome in contemporary poetry in English (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-344) and index
The return of classics / Stephen Harrison -- Horace on Teesside / Maureen Almond -- Jumping their bones : translating, transgressing and creating / Josephine Balmer -- Reconnecting with the classics / Robert Crawford -- Catullus in the playground / Anna Jackson -- Lapsed classicist / Michael Longley -- Weeping for Hecuba / Tony Harrison -- Title deeds : translating a classic / Seamus Heaney -- The Argippaei (Herodotus 4. 23) in Belfast / Maureen Alden -- Michael Longley appropriates Latin poetry / Brian Arkins -- The Homeric convergences and divergences of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley / Oliver Taplin -- Is 'the frail silken line' worth more than 'a fart in a bearskin'? or, how translation practice matters in poetry and drama / Lorna Hardwick -- The figure of Electra in Sylvia Plath's poetry : a case of identification / Anastasia Bakogianni -- The autobiography of the western subject : Carson's Geryon / Edith Hall -- 'Purple shining lilies' : imagining the Aeneid in contemporary poetry / Rowena Fowler -- Shades of Rome in the poetry of Derek Walcott / Emily Greenwood -- 'We'll all be Penelopes then' : art and domesticity in American women's poetry, 1958-1996 / Isobel Hurst -- Catullus in New Zealand : Baxter and Stead / Stephen Harrison
This collection of essays explores the extensive use of Latin and Greek literary texts in a range of recent poetry written in English. It contains both contributions from poets, who include Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Longley, talking about their uses of classical literature in their own work in lyric poetry and in theatre poetry, and essays from academic experts on the same topics. Living Classics asks why contemporary poets are returning to making versionsof and allusions to Greek and Roman literature in their work, and interrogates the parallel interest of modern classical sch