Dancing in Odessa

Surreal enough to be true, these poems waltz through encounters within families and without. The people depicted are in equal measure brutal and tender, in narratives that are strangely innocent, compelling and convincing. The poems draw on archetype and myth, as well as Russian literary figures, in tightly realised domestic settings that invigorate them with a contemporary relevance, with humour and torment, and, all the while, music. Dancing in Odessa was published in the US by Tupelo Press in 2004 and won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine.