Though the Sky Is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat: Selected Poems by Olga Stehlíková, translated by David Vichnar PRE-ORDER Smokestack Books and a Slelected Poems

and a Slelected Poems

the meticulous describer of the natural world whose endlessly resourceful language is our connection to its otherness

Cuirt Festival Director

or men trying to save themselves

Language is on the loose in these poems

Though the Sky Is Embroidered by a Zigzagging Bat: Selected Poems by Olga Stehlíková, translated by David Vichnar PRE-ORDER Smokestack Books and a Slelected PoemsOlga Stehlkovs poems fashion new worlds, recognisable as our own planet, but not quite as weve seen it before. Her images are continually surprising, the language even more so, the humour pitch dark. David Vichnars vibrant translations ably convey the unconventionality of the original Czech in poems that never stray from deep human concerns and anxieties: a camera takes the place of a crucifix above a hospital ward door, a face reflected in a swimming