Isobel Williams will give a talk about her new, illustrated free translations of 60 poems by the late Roman poet Catullus.

Isobel Williams's Catullus: Shibari Carmina is different in kind from the earlier versions. 'Translating Catullus has been, for me, like cage fighting with two opponents,' the translator writes: 'not just A Top Poet, but the schoolgirl I was, trained to show the examiner that she knew what each word meant.' The struggle is intensified by the presence of a third element, something that made Catullus come alive, his 'tormented intelligence and romantic versatility'.

Isobel Williams was educated at Woking Girls' Grammar School and Somerville College, Oxford. She blogs about live-drawing in various locations. She has held solo exhibitions in London and Oslo, written articles for publications ranging from The Amorist to International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, and given talks about her work at conferences in the UK and abroad. She wrote and illustrated The Supreme Court: a Guide for Bears in 2017 and is contributing a chapter to Design and Visualisation in Legal Education published by Routledge in 2021.

You can buy a copy of the book here.