Tea set

This book is about what remains after a poem.

The new, "post-poetic" book by Giedroyc Prize laureate Maks Shchur includes the best texts written over nearly two decades (2007–2025).

"Maks Shchur's poetry is rich and multi-layered, evolving from melodic verse to free verse, approaching surrealism... As with all true poets, at the foundation of his uniqueness and heuristic quality lies an attentiveness to the most concrete realities and sensations, re-evaluated by personal epiphany" (Petr Kral)

"The author has a phenomenal command of comparison; he is exceptionally precise in poetic naming... His texts leave the impression of micro-narratives by an observer who, from his place in the universe, calmly watches his surroundings and allows them to influence his sensations, yet he himself stands slightly apart — in fact, disengaged" (Olina Stehlíková)

Maks Shchur (born in Brest in 1977) is the author of several books of poetry ("Amphitheatre", "Early Collection", "Amalgam", "Summer Time", "Address Book") and prose ("Where We Are Not", "A Letter Found in the Ashes", "Completing the Gestalt", "Voices", "Cineroman", "An Attempt at Experimental Self-Construction"), and a translator of poetry from a number of European languages (Whitman, Lear, Dickinson, Lorca, Borges, T. S. Eliot, Bondy, Larkin, Ginsberg, Bukowski).

Among the themes of the new book are love, parenthood, exile, identity, Buddhism, ecology, and others.