A Balkan Exchange

This exciting anthology maps a singular encounter between two groups of poets, one based in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, the other in the North East of England. Over a period of four years, these eight poets, working together as writers, editors and teachers, maintained a creative dialoge. The result is a diverse body of work including original poetry and new translations. Bulgarian poetry, liberated by the casting off of communism, now looks coolly at an uncertain cultural and economic transition. The Bulgarian poets -- Kristin Dimitroval Georgi Gospodinov, Nadya Radulova and VBV -- are all leaders in a remarkable resurgence of Balkan literature. Their British counterparts -- Andy Croft, Mark Robinson, Linda France and W.N. Herbert -- are all highly-regarded and widely-published poets in the UK whose original work in this anthology is marked by formal ingenuity and conceptual daring and is a fitting response to Bulgaria's new poetic voice.