Tom Lowenstein's work as poet and as ethnographer (specialising, above all, in the Inuit of Alaska) has always been interpenetrative, the poetic work deeply informed by the scholarly. This volume selects poetry from his whole career to date, concentrating on the faultline where his ethnographic concerns meet his poetic concerns. Poems have been selected from 'Filibustering in Samsara' and 'Ancient Land: Sacred Whale', as well as from more recent uncollected work. 'Ancestors and Species' makes it clear that Tom Lowenstein is one of Britain's most remarkable poetic voices, at the same time fascinating, and impossible to categorise.