Song of Snogs
Colin Burrow: Catullus Bound, 2 December 2021
Catullus: Shibari Carmina
by Isobel Williams.
Carcanet, 100 pp., £12.99, March,978 1 80017 074 2 Show More
by Isobel Williams.
Carcanet, 100 pp., £12.99, March,
“... What an innocent I am. Until I read Isobel Williams’s reinventions of Catullus as Shibari Carmina I would have guessed that ‘shibari’ was an exotic seasoning, or perhaps a rare type of plant. Having now looked it up online and averted my gaze from the pictures (what ads will I get served in future? Will my IT department shop me?), I learn it’s a form of Japanese bondage, which involves consenting adults and carefully calibrated widths and strengths of jute rope ... ”