Story Saturday: Sneak Peak

We are showcasing Stories every Saturday for your reading pleasure. This week we get a sneak peek into a collection of poems that Alecia Gallant is currently working on that has a release date for later this year.

Author’s Note

How do I begin to describe what I did to this classic piece of literature written by a dead man from ancient Rome. Let’s start at the first encounter where I first met the great Vergil, who was forced upon me by the crushing course load of my first year of university. I was forced to read The Aeneid and think about the story, the detail of why it was essential to read this piece of literature. Let’s say I barely read it and said screw this; then it ended up on both the midterm and in my exam for the class. I had hated the book for about a year afterwards. Then in my third year, after taking a poetry class my first semester, I was like, how can I turn this boring book that I barely read into a bunch of poems for a modern audience. So for the first time in over a year, I picked up The Aeneid and began to read it. Once I finished the damn thing, I sat back, grabbed my highlighter and began to do some damage. I came up with a collection of poems for each book or chapter that breaks it down into different scenes and emotions on each page. Also, if anyone is wondering, I used Sarah Ruden’s translated version of the book, which was published back in 2008, and I will be using their page numbers to line up how my poems flow, if that makes sense. I know this is an unusual author’s note, but that is what you get when the author is a 21-year-old University student who drinks way too much coffee and wants to make old books queer, modern and reflect what I am thinking. This is where I leave you to your own devices to discover The Aeneid and the poems created from it.

Alecia Gallant

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The Fall

Troy

A Fated Exile

Land and Sea

Unforgetting

War Gods

Rome’s Muse

Queen of Heaven

What power

Righteous Hero

Such anger

An ancient

Fierce war

Juno’s favourite

Carthage, Her chariot

Would rule

If fate allowed