Catullus for children
Auckland University Press, 2003
Translation theory contrasts a "foreignising" approach to translation with a "domesticating" approach. Catullus for Children goes about as far as possible in "domesticating" Catullus, presenting scenes and images from his poems in the context of the life of a New Zealand child. This is Catullus in the playground, where tempers are wild and passions are capsizing. Also in the collection are poems in response to Russian writers of the twentieth century and poems about panadol, mice, purple beans, rock pools, pewter and the invisibility of poets.
Buy Catullus for children
Translation theory contrasts a "foreignising" approach to translation with a "domesticating" approach. Catullus for Children goes about as far as possible in "domesticating" Catullus, presenting scenes and images from his poems in the context of the life of a New Zealand child. This is Catullus in the playground, where tempers are wild and passions are capsizing. Also in the collection are poems in response to Russian writers of the twentieth century and poems about panadol, mice, purple beans, rock pools, pewter and the invisibility of poets.
Buy Catullus for children
Cover art work by Tracey Williams
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“and if we add some thousands more / who would be able to count? / We could kiss a million times / and no one could tell! / A billion and the whirl of mouths / would make such a force field / it would propel you into class / invisible, but on arrival, such a star. / How did you do that? / You wouldn't have to tell." |
Reviews
"Children become protagonists in this domestic realm with its clever echoes and simple ventriloquism, its faux-naive sensibility, its moments of truth-telling...amid the destabilising qualifiers and jigsaw structure there’s a raw lyrical immediacy and an arresting sensibility" David Eggleton, New Zealand Listener, 2004
"The playfulness and the temptation to add a new twist to ancient poems are given free reign in Balmer’s Chasing Catullus: Poems, Translations and Transgressions, and in Anna Jackson’s Catullus for Children ... In "Deer" the chase for kisses is wonderfully light and swift…" Oliver Burkhardt, "Catullus, today and always," Quadrant, January/February 2005
"The dream of an all-encompassing vision that is the fairytale of the New ZealandRussian poetic romance fulfils a similar need, intertwining the heat-panting chirp of cicadas with the muffl ed crunch of hoof-beats on snow—a dream of
somewhere and nowhere comprising a strange, and yet strangely familiar, mix of cliché, citation and impassioned encounter" Jacob Edmond, Landfall 213, 2007
"The poems have a vibrancy that readers of Catullus will recognise..." Sarah Nooter, Modern Philology, 2013
"Children become protagonists in this domestic realm with its clever echoes and simple ventriloquism, its faux-naive sensibility, its moments of truth-telling...amid the destabilising qualifiers and jigsaw structure there’s a raw lyrical immediacy and an arresting sensibility" David Eggleton, New Zealand Listener, 2004
"The playfulness and the temptation to add a new twist to ancient poems are given free reign in Balmer’s Chasing Catullus: Poems, Translations and Transgressions, and in Anna Jackson’s Catullus for Children ... In "Deer" the chase for kisses is wonderfully light and swift…" Oliver Burkhardt, "Catullus, today and always," Quadrant, January/February 2005
"The dream of an all-encompassing vision that is the fairytale of the New ZealandRussian poetic romance fulfils a similar need, intertwining the heat-panting chirp of cicadas with the muffl ed crunch of hoof-beats on snow—a dream of
somewhere and nowhere comprising a strange, and yet strangely familiar, mix of cliché, citation and impassioned encounter" Jacob Edmond, Landfall 213, 2007
"The poems have a vibrancy that readers of Catullus will recognise..." Sarah Nooter, Modern Philology, 2013