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