an exploration of 21st century attitudes to genocide
'...one of the best books to have appeared in [the] UK so far this century...' Jeremy Hilton Fire #19
'...Smith's language has an abstract and untethered feel, but his descriptions of the natural cycle of life continuing beyond and without reference to the prisoners are compellingly precise...' L. Kiew NHI Online Review '...prose-poetry items which stand alone, or as a landscape of observations... This is a new approach; you need to read it yourself.' Geoff Stevens Purple Patch #101 Rip Bulkeley said - of some of those already published, in this case in the River King Poetry Supplement (USA) - '...suddenly I ran into something not just good but great, a poem which I hope has already gone round the world but if not should do so as soon as possible. It is Sam Smith's PIECES, an exhibition of 21st-century war via the small-town concentration camp...' NHI Online Review
Excerpt
A slow drizzle collects on latitudes of wire.
Drops congregate, meet and merge, run along
to the lowest point, and drip; shattering on lower
strands and making miniature cascades. Singular
drops snail backwards down the vertical.
Believing all water here, because it is here,
to be undrinkable, dehydration has created a vitamin B deficiency, adding to his delusional state. The already lack of vitamin C
means that his skin has spots and lesions,
his gums are swollen and his teeth loose.
The songs and art in this book are about our collective emergence after the pandemic and trauma of the last few years - comprised of 5 collections: World as Refuge, Where We Live, In Our Hands, Rhythms of Change and What We See & Sow.
First Edition Translation of Teselas by Carmen Crespo X111 César Simón Poetry Prixe 2016 Translated from Spanish by Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospíde
