Translation of the Route

'Wittner's poems in Adcock's deft translation fold entire but only half-seen narratives into brief glimpses, like interior lives flashing past the window of a moving train. They are delivered with a misleading directness – a garrulous voice at your ear, its utterances appearing quotidian but imbued with the weird and cryptic. We sift for clues. How to decipher a particular coffee stain, the distant tinkle of broken glass, arcane road signs, a particular shade of fallen leaf, the shadows cast by dancing laundry? Wittner is alert to these strange messages, curious about them all, and willing to embrace the not-knowing. I could read these poems every day and still find the new in them. -- Martha Sprackland
Poems of the radiant everyday. In Juana Adcock's warm translation, Laura Wittner's chatty, witty voice comes through with gorgeous clarity. Reading this book is like listening to a wise, beloved friend over coffee. -- Clare Pollard
'What I really love about these poems is their clarity. They give a luminescence to the most concrete of objects. They show us how individual moments in a normal day can be the occasion for celebration, or reflection on a whole lifetime. They make me look again at the cup in my hand or the view from my window that I thought I knew. -- Sarah Hesketh