"In AD 17, Publius Ovidius Naso, the Roman poet Ovid, died in exile in the Black Sea port of Tomis (now Constanta in Romania.) He had offended the emperor, Augustus, for verses that may have touched on scandals in the imperial court, from which he was dismissed in AD 8. Famously grief-stricken, he burnt his manuscript of what would become one of the world's most celebrated anthologies of verse tales."

This quote is from the introduction by the editors Nessa O'Mahony and Paul Munden to this new anthology in which 21st Century poets responded to Ovid.

A 100 poets responded to the songs in Metamorphosis from all over the world, and the book was published by Recent Work Press, supported by the University of Canberra, Australia. There were launches in York, Canberra, Belfast and one more to come in Dublin at Poetry Ireland on 29th November with a reading of some 23 poets. I wrote about Orpheus.

The cover was designed by Kim Sharkey