Up here in the library, where the sun -
Apollo's sun, mind - falls upon me
And will do, winter white and often fogspun,

Each morning when I enter to start work,
Pick a paintbrush, flick pigment through its mane.

from 'J.M.W. Turner: The Library'
   

Sasha Dugdale's first collection of poems takes its title from the notebook kept by the artist J.M.W. Turner, whose responses to the world are explored in seven of her poems. But the book is also a notebook of the poet's own experiences, of living and working in Russia, of relationships and identity. Best known as a translator of contemporary Russian drama, Dugdale writes with deep insight, finding beauty and humanity in bleakness and desperation. Her sympathies are for the outsider, the observer: the woman standing alone as a crowd surges around her, the waiting figures at a snowbound airport - the painter and the poet. Linking all the poems in the collection is Dugdale's belief in the creative power of the artist and the writer to both record and transform reality.