Diana Arterian brings Agrippina’s story into the present

Winner of the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award; winner of the Medal Provocateur from the Eric Hoffer Book Awards; named a best poetry collection of 2025 by Electric Literature and Ms. Magazine. A poetic journey through the past of the Roman Empress Agrippina looks toward the future.

“Agrippina the Younger” follows one woman’s study of another, separated by thousands of miles and two millennia but bound by a shared sense of powerlessness. Agrippina was a daughter in a golden political family, destined for greatness — but she hungered for more power than women were allowed. Exhausted by the misogyny of the present, Diana Arterian reaches into the past to try to understand the patriarchal systems of today. In lyric verse and prose poems, she traces Agrippina’s rise, interrogating a life studded with intrigue, sex, murder and manipulation. Arterian eagerly pursues Agrippina through texts, ruins, and films, exhuming the hidden details of the ancient noblewoman’s life. These poems consider the valences of patriarchy, power and the archive to try to answer the question: How do we recover a woman erased by history?