News at Eleven: Catulla's is a world of decadent excess

and morning-after desolation, of hangovers of the moral as well as the physical kind; of reality TV, suburban infidelity, jealousy and besottedness. There's even some dogging, and a few dogs. "May you never know/how slow unlovely women burn," says Catulla, in a poem Atkinson constructs from "Catullus 8" and "11", "nor how we keep our heads down. Sod you. All the books say I must/break this at the stem. Live long,/die happy. Take these petals as they come--/for kisses, curses, kisses."

from The Guardian: Catulla et al by Tiffany Atkinson--review

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