When Carol Rumens visited Russia last year [1987], she kept a diary of her trip. As well as her day-to-day impressions of a Russia thawing out under glasnost, it includes several groups of poems: Outsiders, Revolutionary Miniatures (a sequence on the lesser lights of 1905 and 1917), Ice and Fire, and her translations of several Russian poets, from Blok to Mandelstam. Her diary has now become a Russian scrapbook. Poems started on the trip have been finished. She has added her own photographs, and artist Jamie Jamieson-Black has contributed a series of sketches. The book offers an unusual insight into Carol Rumens's personal engagement with Russian culture, and a view of Russian lives, loves and literature. Poetry Book Society Recommendation