Peter Hughes 
Cavalcanty 

The thirteenth-century Tuscan poet Guido Cavalcanti helped to create a new poetry that belonged to the city rather than the court, and through his use of Tuscan vernacular gave an extraordinary intensity and craft to his explorations of the social and psychological dimensions of love. Peter Hughes has taken Cavalcanti’s groundbreaking poems and used them as springboards for his own creative versions. Following in the footsteps of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who translated Cavalcanti for the nineteenth century, and Ezra Pound, who translated him for the twentieth, Peter Hughes invites us to consider Cavalcanti’s lustrous Tuscan songs afresh. ‘Peter Hughes’s vulgar eloquence fuses earthy, contemporary imagery with Cavalcanti’s ‘elevated’ elusive themes, converting his verses to an utterly original contemporary language … and affording exquisite, tactile pleasure.’ Lou Rowan // ‘What an erotic and libidinous bonanza … These are the songs my ears are still ringing to, tinnitus the price of love.’ Simon Smith // ‘enough vim and versatility to launch a thousand poems, let alone fifty-two. Purists will object vigorously to this version; impurists will object vigorously to any other.’ Rod Mengham // ‘This coruscating and athletic détournement of the Italian is an audacious and seductive display that leaves us wanting more.’ John James

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Peter Hughes was born in Oxford in 1956. He lived in Italy for several years and continues to find inspiration in Italian literature. He is now based in Cambridge where he runs Oystercatcher Press. He was the 2016/17 Judith E. Wilson Visiting Poetry Fellow at Cambridge University and is a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College. A Selected Poems came out from Shearsman in 2013 and his versions of the complete sonnets of Petrarch were published by Reality Street in 2015. He is currently working on a project inspired by Leopardi whilst continuing to collaborate with poets including John Hall and Simon Marsh.