Blind field

The term 'Blind Field' refers to photography, and in this, George Szirtes's seventh collection, photographic themes supply the starting-points for a number of poems of almost surrealistic dislocation. These give way at the end to a group of more warmly affectionate, personal poems. The centre of the book is occupied by a long work, 'Transylvana', in which the poet revisits his mother's home-town in Romania and depicts the life of an unnamed relative in that country's still ominous political atmosphere.