Biographer and translator Daisy Dunn tells the story of Rome’s first modern poet, Catullus, a dandy who fell in love with another man’s wife and wrote some of the greatest poems of the era out of the experience.

The life and poetry of Catullus was filled with love, loss, political conflict and a desire for escape. Dunn follows him from his native Verona to Rome and describes the indulgences and sexual mores of the time. She describes his passionate affair with the married Clodia and her betrayal of him with another man, which resulted in Catallus’s most famous work, Poem 64. This is a lyrical story of a lover’s desertion told through a picture on a bedspread. Dunn follows Catullus on his brief period of escape before his early death at 30.

Dunn is a classics scholar and writes and reviews for many publications. Alongside her biography of Catallus, she has published her new translations, ‘The Poems of Catallus.’

Dunn is a graduate of St Hilda’s College and this event is part of St Hilda’s day at the festival.