Great Regulars: The tension throughout [Peter] Reading's work

between despair and the consolations of tradition is clear in this volume, the very title of which suggests that, although the world is moving backwards, we can draw strength from looking at the past; the events of the present are not new. In this poem, for example, Reading translates lines from Book Three of Ovid's Tristia which describe the barbarian attacks he endured in Pontus, a remote part of the Roman Empire to which he had been banished.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Poem of the Week: Tristia

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