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Letters From Latin America
Reviews of poetry collections by Maia Elsner and Andres N Ordorica
A 1910 postcard of the New Synagogue in Cestochowa blown up by the Nazis on December 25 1939 [Wikipedia]

OVERRUN BY WILD BOARS (Flipped Eye, £6,95) is British Latinx author Maia Elsner’s debut poetry collection. Multilayered and ambitious, it explores the nuances of family histories, migration, belonging, genocide and love.

The poet, who was born in London to Mexican and Polish Jewish parents, manages to create a work that is as lyrically beautiful as it is formally exciting — it encompasses elegies and ghazals to sestinas, sonnets and poems inspired by art and architecture.

The book is filled with vibrant coloured birds, with Polish and Mexican stories of loss, strength and redemption, as well as explorations of what it means to live between cultures and languages.

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