Category Archives: Poetry

Less is more

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Today is National Poetry Day, and this year’s theme is ‘Remember’. Could there be a better occasion for me to throw in a gratuitous Latin poem from the Carmina Latina Epigraphica? No, I didn’t think so, either. So here it … Continue reading →

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Remember Lucius M-whatsisface?

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

I am a lucky person. The British Academy recently awarded me a Mid-Career Fellowship for 2014-5, allowing me to work on a project on my long-standing research interest, Latin inscriptions in verse or, as they are more commonly called among … Continue reading →

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Ennius on War and (Dashed Hopes for) Peace

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Quintus Ennius was one of ancient Rome’s greatest poets. He served as a soldier during the Second Punic War. In his epic poem Annales (‘Yearbooks’), which survives in fragments, Ennius, far from being a pacifist himself (even in the fragments … Continue reading →

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Looking at War with Lucretius

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

The last few weeks and months saw the emergence of numerous new (and old) centres of conflict around the globe: Ukraine, Iraq, Israel and Palestine, and Syria are the most prominent regions that attracted, or continue to attract, attention of … Continue reading →

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Love Bites

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

One of the more bizarre stories of the 2014 FIFA World Cup was the Luis Suárez biting incident: Uruguay’s striker, currently playing for Liverpool, bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini. Suárez has a remarkable history of this peculiar behaviour: Meanwhile, the incident … Continue reading →

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Pygmalion Takes the Turing Test

Posted on June 13, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

A few days ago, my colleague Prof. Kevin Warwick organised a Turing test competition at the Royal Society in London (in conjunction with the University of Reading), on occasion of the 60th anniversary of Alan Turing‘s death. Hailed as a … Continue reading →

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Neither the First, Nor the Wurst

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

When Conchita Wurst, the carefully designed and meticulously planned stage persona of the Austrian artist Tom Neuwirth, won the 2014 European Song Contest with his song Rise Like A Phoenix, a majority of people simply enjoyed the power of music … Continue reading →

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The Divine Riches of the Latin Language

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

My son’s interest in the Latin language, fuelled by his engaging Latin teacher, remains unbroken. Recently, for example, he wished to discuss the authenticity of some volumes of John Maddox Roberts‘s beautifully entertaining SPQR series with me (to a depth … Continue reading →

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Misappropriation and Misapprehension: Vergil on 9/11

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

Memorials are difficult: what do we wish to remember, and how, and why? This becomes all the more apparent, the more prominent and the more emotive a monument is in its context. Recently, there has been some (renewed) debate over … Continue reading →

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Waxing Poetic: Bees and Death (and Bee Death)

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Peter Kruschwitz

The issue, and in fact the very idea, of bee death and colony collapses – a constant feature of the news for a number of years now – is deeply worrying and unsettling: how will we all survive, if the … Continue reading →

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