Maria Laina’s first stand-alone English-language collection, deftly translated by Sarah McCann, follows in the Sapphic vein: fragmented, prophetic, and emotionally charged.

The poems in Rose Fear stand out for their lyric precision, carving symbolically rich images drawn from mythology and the natural world. Rose Fear follows in the Sapphic vein: frequently fragmented, vatic, and emotionally charged. In her translations, Sarah McCann deftly captures the music and the vividness of Laina’s scenes, which take their inspiration from regions as diverse as Japan, the Caribbean, and her native Greece. Yet always behind the recognizable world lie the rhythms and lights of the fable, the fairy tale, and the spell.