Simon Perris in his book on Euripides tries out an idea I find quite ravishing: “Dionysus is a god of identity transformation…Is it too fanciful, then, to see him as a god of translation, adaptation, and other modes of textual transformation?”  I have been adapting and transforming Catullus since I wrote Catullus for Children, published in 2004.  Ten years later, I wrote not adaptations but responses to the Catullus poems, published as I, Clodia in 2014.  Now I have been returning to translation, initially because I was looking for a literal translation of Catullus 51, his own translation of Sappho, a search leading me first to work out my own, then to try working it into an English version of a Sapphic metre, then wondering how it would work if I figured Catullus as a waitress, then wondering how this would work as a sonnet, then, not wanting to write sonnets as such, playing around with the layout until, look, it is like stars in a starry sky!  I am working my way through a series of YA sonnets taking off from the waitress ones, and then converting them all into starry sonnets spread out on the page, but also working my way through some literal translations, in and out of metres, of the poems Clodia writes back to.   Writing in galliambics was fun, but even  harder was writing in the Etherin, as I did for my latest version of Catullus 51. 

Other more and less straightforward translations of Catullus poems: 
Catullus 2
Catullus 2 (in hendecasyllables)
Trippy (after Catullus 2)
Catullus 3
Catullus 5
Catullus 5 (in hendecasyllables)
Catullus 8
Catullus 8 (in the choliambic metre - Catullus's limping iambs)
Catullus 50
Catullus 63 (in galliambics) 
Catullus 85

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Hating and loving, I make no sense even to my own self –
I can’t explainhow I feel!  Crucified, that’s how I feel!  









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