Tityrus

Duncan Wiese's subversive pastoral Tityrus shows how fraught life has become for the Arcadian shepherds among us. Refusing to sugarcoat Tityrus's experience of our fetid and worn-out world, Wiese uncovers the daily pathos and absurdities of contemporary life. This spare yet encompassing verse narrative, deftly translated by Max Minden Ribeiro and Sam Riviere, provides an insightful and haunting portrait of our time; - Denise Newman: I lost myself in this bittersweet sequence and it already feels like a place I've visited, a life I stowed-away in beyond the poems. A voice so compulsively readable, both tersely clear and compellingly mysterious that it gets into your head and starts narrating your own life; - Luke Kennard; A pastoral where the shepherd not only grazes his sheep, but also himself, the human - where human and animal overlap in a current of medicine, food, myth, alcohol - and love. So right on time is Tityrus; - Ursula Andkjaer Olsen