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If people know Catullus at all it is for his poems to his lover Lesbia. Love poems. But some of that love is pain. Such as LXXXV
I hate and love. Perhaps you're asking why I do that?
I don't know, but I feel it happening, and am racked.
Which reminded me of the beginning of Graham Greene's 'The End of the Affair' - This is a story of hate.

But this collection, which is all that we have of Catullus, contains other poems: wedding hymns, elegies, epigrams, abuse. He can kick at his enemies, unnamed though they often are. Did people know who he was talking about? His friends might have done - some of whom come in for a kicking of their own when the stray into his Lesbia's path.

They vary in length. They vary in subject matter. They vary in levels of abuse and swearing. He's not up to Juvenal's levels of length and breadth of vitriol, but he can make a good go of it. Here's the start of XCVII:

I thought (so help me Gods!) it made no difference
Whether I smelt Aemilius' mouth or arsehole,
One being no cleaner, the other no filthier.

On reading this I did find myself wishing my Latin was better than almost incompetent. This is Guy Lee's translation from 1997 and I feel sometimes it tried to hard to sound 'modern'. Some of it dropped with an unmusical clang. But the poems are clear and easy to understand, although I think with some of the longer ones more notes were required to explain references. I'd like to find a really thorough modern translation with copious notes.

I do like that this has both the original Latin and the English on opposing pages so if you want to have a go at translating you can. I tried a couple of times with the shorter ones but it became very clear why I got a U at Latin A-Level.