Homeric Hymns

McDonald Peter

In this unique and finely-wrought collection, award-winning poet and scholar Peter McDonald gives us the first contemporary translation of the Homeric Hymns; a collection of 33 anonymous Ancient Greek hymns celebrating individual gods. From Zeus to Aphrodite, Apollo to Hermes, each hymn tells a story about a particular god, and every poem is a miniature epic in itself. As McDonald explains in his comprehensive introduction, "Homer without the Hymns is less than Homer", and this translation revives the classic text for the 21st century reader, establishing its rightful place alongside copies of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" on the desks of students, scholars, and lovers of the classics worldwide.

About the Author

Peter McDonald was born and grew up in Belfast. He won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry and an Eric Gregory Award. A University teacher, he is currently Christopher Tower Student and Tutor in Poetry in the English Language at Christ Church, Oxford. A prominent critic of modern and contemporary poetry, he has published a book on Louis MacNeice, a study of Northern Irish poetry entitled Mistaken Identities, and, most recently, "Serious Poetry: Form and Authority from Yeats to Hill". He has edited MacNeice's Selected Plays, and is also the editor of the forthcoming new edition of MacNeice's "Collected Poems".

Reviews

"Peter McDonald's unsettling imagination occupies a middle distance between domesticity and wilderness... [his] disenchanted vision makes the moments of intimacy and tenderness, when they come, all the more affecting" – Michael Longley, CBE

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