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.
"'BITER powerfully strips back the experience of being human across millennia, revealing sharp teeth, still-beating hearts and iron cervices alike. Here the veins of the Tiber flow right through to the Otakaro, and Byzantine scholars burn with the same passions as the modern woman - even when she finds herself in the back of a charging Nissan Leaf. Jardine weaves all the tones and textures of life together into a collection that shines with erudition while firmly asserting that to err is human, especially in the kitchen.'"
