One of the most intriguing and engaging voices in contemporary Christianity is that of the Irish poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama and this is his first, long-awaited poetry collection. Hailing from the Ikon community in Belfast and working closely with its founder, the bestselling writer Pete Rollins, Pádraig’s poetry interweaves parable, poetry, art, activism and philosophy into an original and striking expression of faith. Pádraig’s poems are accessible, memorable profound and challenging. They emerge powerfully from a context of struggle and conflict and yet are filled with hope.

In his book Josef Hrdlička opens the question of what exactly constitutes Exile Poetry, and indeed whether it amounts to a category as fundamental as Romantic or Bucolic lyricism. He covers the intricately complex and diverse topic of exile by exploring selected literary texts from antiquity to the present, giving due attention to writers that have influenced the exile discourse; from Ovid, Goethe and Baudelaire to the thinkers and poets of the 20th century like Adorno or Saint-John Perse. Against this backdrop of exile poetics, he turns his attention to Czech poets who left their homeland after the Communist Coup of 1948 and were notable contributors to Czech literature abroad. Hrdlička considers the works of Ivan Blatný, Milada Součková, Ivan Diviš and Petr Král, to show the continuity and changes in the western poetic tradition and expressions of exile.

ñThe pain comes not from nostalgia . . . I write because I cannot remember at all,î Carolina Hospital explains in her poem, ñDear TÕa.î HospitalÍs poetry becomes the art of tracing her journey through exile and across both psychological and cultural borders. Hospital left Cuba as a child, accompanying her parents seeking refuge in the U.S. Her creative act of recall, in poems written between 1983 and 2003, the formative years in the poetÍs life, chronicles her search for meaning and identity as a woman and a Latina living in the U.S. Hospital unravels the world around her, the hyphenated man, the vendors outside of the Jos? Marti YMCA in Miami, the rafters who chart violent waters for a dream, and her own family and friends. With stunning and sharp beauty, HospitalÍs poems conjure a community caught between conflicting myths and cultures. She spins a wide range of themes: love and betrayal, motherhood and sacrifice, creation and the quest for faith, and loss of communication. In the end, this poetry memoir provides consolation, for it is in the common condition of exile and yearning to belong that we connect as human beings.

"This is no small achievement. For the language-lover the translation provides elegant, flowing English verse, for the classicist it conveys close approximation to the Latin meaning coupled with a sense of the movement and rhythmic variety of Ovid's language"—Geraldine Herbert-Brown, editor of Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium "This book fills a gap. There is no similar annotated English translation of Ovid's exile poetry. Thoroughly grounded in Ovidian scholarship, Green's introduction and notes are helpful and informative. The translation is accurate, idiomatic, and lively, closely imitating the Latin elegiac couplet and capturing Ovid's changing moods."—Karl Galinsky, author of Ovid's Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.--University of Texas at Austin, 1982)

"Someone clever, passionate, and heartbroken comes very near us, and I think it is Ovid. I found it impossible to stop reading these poems. And poems they are."--Richard Wilbur.

Selected by Marilyn Hacker as the 1998 Winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry.