Contemporary poetry and classics

Abstract

This chapter looks at the here and now and the unselfconscious use of Greek and Latin writers by contemporary British and Irish poets. In 1973 an enterprising garland-maker collected together some 850 translations from The Greek Anthology. Most of the versions by the fifty or so contributors were specially commissioned, and they included some excellent epigrams, some by poets already quite well known, including Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Peter Levi, Edwin Morgan and Peter Porter. This discussion states that this volume marks a transition, from an age when a project like this had been primarily the preserve of scholars, and when classical poetry was predominantly the preserve of the few, to the present age when it has been opened up to a wide range of creative artists.