Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, and has taught at several universities. She was Director of Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and held the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where she is now a University Professor. Her many honours include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award, given in 1997 for using her poetry as a ‘means to attain understanding, reconciliation, and peace within communities and between communities’; and most recently, Yale University's Windham-Campbell Prize. Her first collection, Gathering the Tribes (1976), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. Her second book, The Country Between Us (1981; UK reissue from Bloodaxe, 2019), drew on her experiences in El Salvador before and during the civil war, and won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her later collections have drawn upon work written over many years: The Angel of History (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 1994), Blue Hour (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 2003), and In the Lateness of the World (Bloodaxe Books, UK; Penguin Press, USA, 2020). Her landmark anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Norton, 1993), was followed by Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English: 1500-2001 (Norton, 2014), edited with Duncan Wu. She is Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, and edited the anthology The Mighty Stream: Poems in celebration of Martin Luther King (Bloodaxe Books / Newcastle University, 2017) with Jackie Kay. Her memoir What You Have Heard Is True: a memoir of witness and resistance (2019) was published by Penguin at the same time as Bloodaxe's UK reissue of her 1981 collection The Country Between Us, which covers the same period as the memoir. Her translations include Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (with Munir Akash, 2003), Claribel Alegría's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991).

• 15 Museum of Stones16 The Boatman17 Water Crisis18 Report from an Island19 The Last Puppet21 The Lightkeeper22 The Crossing23 Exile24 Fisherman25 For Ilya at Tsarskoye Selo26 The Lost Suitcase28 Last Bridge30 Elegy for an Unknown Poet32 Letter to a City Under Siege33 Travel Papers38 The Refuge of Art40 A Room45 The Ghost of Heaven48 Ashes to Guazapa49 Hue: From a Notebook50 Morning on the Island51 A Bridge52 The End of Something53 Early Life54 Tapestry55 Visitation56 In Time of War57 Lost Poem58 Charmolypi59 Souffrance60 Sanctuary61 Uninhabited62 Clouds63 Passage64 Light of Sleep65 Theologos67 Mourning68 Transport69 Early Confession70 Toward the End72 What Comes 75 Dedications and notes76 Acknowledgements

It has been 17 years since Carolyn Forché published a book of poems, and In the Lateness of the World announces she is back. Coming fast on the heels of her memoir of last year this book is bursting with poems of migration, crossing, and looking back. It is as if the poet is standing, one foot in the river, wondering which way the next crossing will go. Drawing on her own travels and periods of reporting, on the world’s seemingly endless upheaval, these poems move beyond disquiet and creates the charged ethical field in which we all live, all the time, especially at that moment we move.

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, and has taught at several universities. She was Director of Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and held the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where she is now a University Professor. Her many honours include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award, given in 1997 for using her poetry as a ‘means to attain understanding, reconciliation, and peace within communities and between communities’; and most recently, Yale University's Windham-Campbell Prize. Her first collection, Gathering the Tribes (1976), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. Her second book, The Country Between Us (1981; UK reissue from Bloodaxe, 2019), drew on her experiences in El Salvador before and during the civil war, and won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her later collections have drawn upon work written over many years: The Angel of History (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 1994), Blue Hour (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 2003), and In the Lateness of the World (Bloodaxe Books, UK; Penguin Press, USA, 2020). Her landmark anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Norton, 1993), was followed by Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English: 1500-2001 (Norton, 2014), edited with Duncan Wu. She is Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, and edited the anthology The Mighty Stream: Poems in celebration of Martin Luther King (Bloodaxe Books / Newcastle University, 2017) with Jackie Kay. Her memoir What You Have Heard Is True: a memoir of witness and resistance (2019) was published by Penguin at the same time as Bloodaxe's UK reissue of her 1981 collection The Country Between Us, which covers the same period as the memoir. Her translations include Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (with Munir Akash, 2003), Claribel Alegría's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991).

• 15 Museum of Stones16 The Boatman17 Water Crisis18 Report from an Island19 The Last Puppet21 The Lightkeeper22 The Crossing23 Exile24 Fisherman25 For Ilya at Tsarskoye Selo26 The Lost Suitcase28 Last Bridge30 Elegy for an Unknown Poet32 Letter to a City Under Siege33 Travel Papers38 The Refuge of Art40 A Room45 The Ghost of Heaven48 Ashes to Guazapa49 Hue: From a Notebook50 Morning on the Island51 A Bridge52 The End of Something53 Early Life54 Tapestry55 Visitation56 In Time of War57 Lost Poem58 Charmolypi59 Souffrance60 Sanctuary61 Uninhabited62 Clouds63 Passage64 Light of Sleep65 Theologos67 Mourning68 Transport69 Early Confession70 Toward the End72 What Comes 75 Dedications and notes76 Acknowledgements

It has been 17 years since Carolyn Forché published a book of poems, and In the Lateness of the World announces she is back. Coming fast on the heels of her memoir of last year this book is bursting with poems of migration, crossing, and looking back. It is as if the poet is standing, one foot in the river, wondering which way the next crossing will go. Drawing on her own travels and periods of reporting, on the world’s seemingly endless upheaval, these poems move beyond disquiet and creates the charged ethical field in which we all live, all the time, especially at that moment we move.

Carolyn Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1950, and has taught at several universities. She was Director of Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, and held the Lannan Visiting Chair in Poetry at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, where she is now a University Professor. Her many honours include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts; the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award, given in 1997 for using her poetry as a ‘means to attain understanding, reconciliation, and peace within communities and between communities’; and most recently, Yale University's Windham-Campbell Prize. Her first collection, Gathering the Tribes (1976), was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets by Stanley Kunitz. Her second book, The Country Between Us (1981; UK reissue from Bloodaxe, 2019), drew on her experiences in El Salvador before and during the civil war, and won the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. Her later collections have drawn upon work written over many years: The Angel of History (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 1994), Blue Hour (HarperCollins, USA; Bloodaxe Books, 2003), and In the Lateness of the World (Bloodaxe Books, UK; Penguin Press, USA, 2020). Her landmark anthology, Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness (Norton, 1993), was followed by Poetry of Witness: The Tradition in English: 1500-2001 (Norton, 2014), edited with Duncan Wu. She is Visiting Professor at Newcastle University, and edited the anthology The Mighty Stream: Poems in celebration of Martin Luther King (Bloodaxe Books / Newcastle University, 2017) with Jackie Kay. Her memoir What You Have Heard Is True: a memoir of witness and resistance (2019) was published by Penguin at the same time as Bloodaxe's UK reissue of her 1981 collection The Country Between Us, which covers the same period as the memoir. Her translations include Mahmoud Darwish's Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (with Munir Akash, 2003), Claribel Alegría's Flowers from the Volcano (1983), and Robert Desnos's Selected Poetry (with William Kulik, 1991).

• 15 Museum of Stones16 The Boatman17 Water Crisis18 Report from an Island19 The Last Puppet21 The Lightkeeper22 The Crossing23 Exile24 Fisherman25 For Ilya at Tsarskoye Selo26 The Lost Suitcase28 Last Bridge30 Elegy for an Unknown Poet32 Letter to a City Under Siege33 Travel Papers38 The Refuge of Art40 A Room45 The Ghost of Heaven48 Ashes to Guazapa49 Hue: From a Notebook50 Morning on the Island51 A Bridge52 The End of Something53 Early Life54 Tapestry55 Visitation56 In Time of War57 Lost Poem58 Charmolypi59 Souffrance60 Sanctuary61 Uninhabited62 Clouds63 Passage64 Light of Sleep65 Theologos67 Mourning68 Transport69 Early Confession70 Toward the End72 What Comes 75 Dedications and notes76 Acknowledgements

It has been 17 years since Carolyn Forché published a book of poems, and In the Lateness of the World announces she is back. Coming fast on the heels of her memoir of last year this book is bursting with poems of migration, crossing, and looking back. It is as if the poet is standing, one foot in the river, wondering which way the next crossing will go. Drawing on her own travels and periods of reporting, on the world’s seemingly endless upheaval, these poems move beyond disquiet and creates the charged ethical field in which we all live, all the time, especially at that moment we move.