In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era selected and edited by J. Kates (Bloodaxe, £12.95 in UK)

More than 30 poets are included in this large bilingual volume, of whom probably the big majority will be unfamiliar to English or Irish readers. The few familiar names include Bella Akhmadulina, Irina Ratushinskaya and Elena Schwartz. Though many or most of these poets are relatively young, a number were born in the 1930s and a few even earlier; in a sense they amount to a kind of Lost Generation, a large number of whom are predictably streetwise, knowledgeable and sometimes cynical, though outgoing and without bile. The translations, for the most part, aim at literalism rather than at "free" poetic versions which subsist on their own merits.