Season of the Swamp Michael Blackburn

Season of the Swamp Michael BlackburnNew Orleans, 1853. A young Zapotec man named Benito Jurez disembarks at a fetid port city at the edge of a swamp along with a small group of fellow political exiles from Mexico. Later, in 1858, he is to become the first indigenous Mexican president, but now he is as anonymous and invisible as any other migrant to the roiling and alluring city. He falls in love with the music and food, but unavoidable, too, is the trade in human beings. A magnificent

an essay on and more artworks by cover artist Yahya al-Sheikh

wider-ranging collection such as this might help readers who are less

a telling document of the immigrant experience

the commander’s bodyguard

spread out

Lowly is part invocation

daring to become

But it goes deeper than that — and it is only when the world is forced to look to the riches of space for human survival that she realises how deep

and what an amazing coincidence that it should be dedicated to the celebration of Libyan literature at such an extraordinary historical moment in the Arab world when the region is witnessing a chain of uprisings and revolutions against dictatorial and corrupt regimes in Tunisia

organised by Poetry Ireland

India and London

or even the shared identities of cannibal and Eucharistic consumption