BITER
Longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry, Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024
Filled with hickeys, puttanesca and tart wit, BITER is an apt title for Claudia Jardine’s debut collection of verse. Fresh translations of erotic Greek epigrams are threaded through boozy sonnets, ecstatic odes and startlingly vulnerable love poems. Jardine weaves ancient and modern together into a rich, glitzy, idiosyncratic tapestry – and in doing so crafts a poetic voice that is at once classical and frisky.
“Claudia’s epigrams are sprinkled throughout the collection like sherbet, they fizz in your mind, little fascinations, so sweetly formed, and then, invitingly, hook you into the enduring power and reach of love, sexuality, hunger, recognition.” — Paula Green, NZ Poetry Shelf
“Jardine doesn’t hesitate to play with form; pantoums and sonnets rub shoulders with free verse. . . . The collection is a celebration of many facets of love through many eyes.” — Erica Stretton, Kete Books
“It’s rare that a book has both such precise silliness and wonky sexiness, but Biter revels in it. The pages will flip themselves, and the poems will stay with you for a long while.” — harold coutts, Bad Apple
2023, Auckland University Press
Cover design by Philip Kelly
Selected Online Reading
- ‘Ode to Mons Pubis’ on The Spinoff
- ‘Rural Activities’ on NZ Poetry Shelf
- ‘Stonefruit’ in Turbine | Kapohau
- ‘The Mycologist Consents’ in Sweet Mammalian
- ‘Stop Reading Catullus 51’ (translation) and ‘Is It Hard to Follow Your Heart When You Have Three?’ in Starling
- ‘Things that Spooked the Ancient Romans’ (translations) in Starling
- ‘Sulpicia 3.13-18’ (translations) in Starling
- ‘Classics meets Cosmo: Dating tips from the 10th century’ on The Spinoff
- ‘I Interrupt This Broadcast: Voice and Silence in Contemporary Translations of Ancient Fragmentary Texts’ in Lemon Juice 3
- ‘Ladybird, Ladybird‘ in Starling
AUP New Poets 7
From Apia to Parnell, ancient Rome to Aro Park and on to the furthest reaches of the internet, AUP New Poets 7 takes readers on an eye-popping journey through contemporary New Zealand poetry.
The collection opens with Rhys Feeney’s passionate take on contemporary global politics and ecological collapse. Next, Ria Masae leads us from a fale in Samoa to the pulsing streets of Auckland city in a voice rooted in the spoken word. And finally Claudia Jardine brings the startling images and unlikely facts from the classical world to echo around inner-city Wellington.
“Three extraordinary poets deep-delve into their various political, social and aesthetic concerns – from Rhys Feeney’s pliable, energetic grappling with late capitalism and climate change, to Ria Masae’s fast-talking, street-smarting, aching social commentary, to Claudia Jardine’s robust engagement with feminisms and the classics. At the same time, there’s a broad-spectrum dialogue going on here as these contemporary sayers hang together on what’s vital.… New Poets 7 continues AUP’s platform for what’s happening in poetry in Aotearoa.” – Anne Kennedy
2020, Auckland University Press
Zines
Taking the Auspices After a Miscommunication
2023, self-published
With illustrations by Lily Wenmoth
My Attempt to Remain in a State of Questioning
2023, self-published
With illustrations by Lily Wenmoth
North EP
2019, self-published
Accompaniment to the North EP audio recording
Designed and illustrated by Cosmo Bones