Grief is a kind of exile and these are the poems of an exile of a woman driven by cruelty into a world where her rights as a mother are negated the right to give love the right to receive love the right to determine her life in accord with her own independent sense of what is proper and just.Her subjects here are grief and love the truths and impossibilities of each and both. More particularly the grief of a loving mother cruelly separated from her infant son the need to find a language of love that may pass between them when he is restored to her embrace.Born in Syria longtime exile in Paris Maram alMasri has built up a devoted international following for her poems. She writes with a clarity and directness that pierces to the heart of things in poems that remorselessly trace the destruction of her homeland that inquire with a cool intelligence into the condition of women in our time here with great poignancy she explores and lays bare the tragedy when a child is torn from the embrace of his mother the difficulties both must face when he is at last restored to her.Maram alMasri is a Syrian poet living in France. Theo Dorgan has previously translated two of her collections into English Barefoot Souls ARC 2015 and Liberty Walks Naked Southword 2017.Theo Dorgans most recent books are Orpheus Dedalus Press 2018 and Bailad Giofgacha his translations into Irish of Lorcas Romancero Gitano Coiscim 2019.