For this bonus episode, we are joined by David Hadbawnik, a poet, translator, and medieval scholar, whose exciting translation of Aeneid Books I–VI was published by Shearsman Books in 2015. In 2012, he edited Thomas Meyer’s Beowulf (Punctum Books), and in 2011 he co-edited selections from Jack Spicer’s Beowulf for CUNY’s Lost and Found Document Series. He has published academic essays on poetic diction in English poetry from the medieval through early modern period. His latest book, Holy Sonnets to Orpheus and Other Poems, was published by Delete Press in 2018.

We ask David about the particular challenges of translating the Aeneid, his approach to the translation, and what he finds compelling (and frustrating) about the second half of the poem as he completes his translation.