In this collection of poems that "refused to sound upbeat," Martine van Bijlert confronts the dissonance of writing about peace "while the world around us bucked and roiled." Fuelled by "memories of aftermath and foreboding" and a stubborn insistence not to call peace what isn't, the poems keep returning to the "messy work / of hoping for a miracle / while wading through / the mud of trying." Van Bijlert's refusal to sugarcoat either war or peace infuses the poems with raw power and emotional depth.

Martine van Bijlert is a mixed media poet, artist and writer, who grew up in Iran, lives in the Netherlands and in between worked as an aid worker, researcher and diplomat, mostly in Afghanistan.