Beyond the Sea brings together two book-length sequences first published in Mexico in the early years of the century, both taking their origins from Greece, a matter of central importance for the poet for many years. Fittingly, for subject-matter thoroughly drenched in the Greek past, the poems are odes and dithyrambs, with the spirit of one sequence being Apollonian, while the other is Dionysian. The gods are there, and imagery that has echoed across the centuries is here transposed into a limpid modern Mexican poetry, composed with the lightest of touches. Here the Mayans of Bonampak meet the Minoans of Knossos, united across the centuries and thousands of miles by their preservation in wall-paintings, and by their observer. Here the gods meet our gaze, and come forth, raised from the ashes of history. They are not dead; they are not forgotten; they have merely been sleeping, only to be awoken by the poet. Elsa Cross is one of the most important living Mexican poets, and this fine translation by the Irish poet, Anamaria Crowe Serrano, does her work spectacular justice.

"In these poems, words are a scalpel that probes the shifting sands of meaning. Themes of identity, communication, love, loss and isolation are peeled pack to reveal, with devastating precision, both the deficiencies and the power of language: words that can heal or save; words that paralyse and attack. The poet uses her instrument - language - both to celebrate and to question whether words can ever be a true medium to define, express identity, communicate. With an unflinching gaze and an originality we have already come to know in Anamaria Crowe Serrano's work, she both exalts and undermines patterns and form in a way that surprises, provokes and exhilarates." -Elizabeth McSkeane

A first collection for Irish poet-translator Anamaria Crowe Serrano. Over the past two to three years her work has been appearing in magazines in Ireland, the UK and the USA, as have her translations from the Spanish and Italian.