James Sutherland-Smith has lived and worked in Serbia and Montenegro through the difficult transitions. Old states fragmented and a new Balkan political landscape emerged. He writes, not as an observer, but from within cultures rebuilding after polit...

These poems are the fruit of estrangement, in particular from origins. They draw on James Sutherland Smith's experiences of life in the Middle East and Middle Europe; what is most strange, they tell us, is not to be found in exotic locales, but close...