Translated by Michael Bullock, these fifteen prose poems by Max Jacob convey a world-weary traveller in treacherous landscapes evoked through images at once slippery, subconcious and ineluctably real.

One of the key members of the group that formed around Apollinaire, a painter as well as a poet, Jacob lived in extreme poverty, working all manner of jobs throughout his life. Although born Jewish, he converted to Catholicism in 1915, six years after having a vision of Christ. In 1921 he moved from Paris to the small village of Saint Benoit-sur-Loire, close to a Benedictine church, where he remained until his arrest by the Nazis in February1944. He died of bronchial pneumonia the following month in a concentration camp at Drancy, near Paris.

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Michael Bullock was born in London in 1918. He has devoted himself intensively to writing and visual art since his mid to late teens. In 1936 he visited the great Surrealist Exhibition at the National Gallery and has remained a committed Surrealist writer and artist ever since. This was followed by a prolonged visit to India, which also made a lasting impression on him that can be clearly seen in his work. He is the author of more than fifty works of poetry and fiction and two plays.

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