Breaking Glass

Breaking Glass follows Beata Duncan on her extraordinary journey from the closing poems of Berlin Blues (Green Bottle Press) to her emigration from Nazi Germany and her arrival and resettlement as a twelve-year-old refugee in England. These beguilingly arch and lyrical poems sing of the challenge of relocation, as she stakes a claim to and stamps her authority on a new language, makes new friends, and experiences teenage love and student life during the London Blitz while she fears for the safety of a  mother she might never again see. 

Characterised throughout by the irony and mischievous humour of their spirited, optimistic and gifted author these important, remarkable and vivid poems are absolutely ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.’