BITER
Claudia Jardine
Ancient Greek epigrams drive a bitingly contemporary first poetry collection.
I fell in love
I kissed
gains made
it all happened
I am desired
but I?
and you?
and how?
one god alone knows
— ‘One God’ from Palatine Anthology V.51 — Anonymous
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.
Author
Claudia Jardine (she/her) is a writer, musician, editor and translator based in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa. She has an MA in classics with distinction from Victoria University of Wellington, where she won the 2020 Alex Scobie Research Prize and a Marsden Grant for Masters scholarship. Her first chapbook, ‘The Temple of Your Girl’, was published in AUP New Poets 7, and her debut poetry collection, BITER, was longlisted for the Mary and Peter Biggs Awards for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards for 2024. Her debut music release, North EP, came out in 2019 and both of its singles topped national indie radio charts. She has been performing as a poet and singer since 2011, and her latest updates can be found at www.claudiajardine.co.nz
Awards
Longlisted — Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2024 — Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry
Endorsements
‘She’s sharp, critical, iconoclastic, sexy, frank and funny – often all of these in one poem. And while love and sexuality are the dominant themes there is nothing it seems that Claudia can’t write poetry about – spilt pasta, raisinhood, her father’s mishandling of cheese wrapping, German kitchen technology, contemporary auspices.’
— Anna Jackson
‘BITER powerfully strips back the experience of being human across millennia, revealing sharp teeth, still-beating hearts and iron cervices alike. Here the veins of the Tiber flow right through to the Ōtākaro, and Byzantine scholars burn with the same passions as the modern woman – even when she finds herself in the back of a charging Nissan Leaf. Jardine weaves all the tones and textures of life together into a collection that shines with erudition while firmly asserting that to err is human, especially in the kitchen.’
— Rebecca K Reilly
Reviews
'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