Jo Shapcott

Jo Shapcott has engaged extensively with Ovid in her poetry (her volume My Book draws extensively upon both the Metamorphoses and the Tristia), but it was especially through her volume Of Mutability that she meditated upon the unexpected pleasures and perils of metamorphosis, since she invoked Ovid in her response to her diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. As well as using Ovid to comment upon a contemporary experience of illness, she also employs Ovidian imagery to address issues such as the financial crisis, the Iraq war, and global warming. In doing so she responds to the tenets of third-wave feminism, whose practitioners seek to explore a wider audience and political sphere than the more rarified, intellectual reach of second-wave feminism. Shapcott’s work is also highly significant in marking the start of the new trend, namely the use of the classics to explore serious illness and the threat of dying.