Describing the attempts of refugees from war to cross the Mediterranean into Europe, Martyn Crucefix’s Cargo of Limbs is about borders in the most concrete, desperate and morally challenging way. He makes the current crisis resonate with Virgil’s epic story of the refugees from Troy by shaping it as a revision of part of Book 6 of the Aeneid, describing Aeneas’s journey to the underworld. You don’t need to know this background to understand the poem, but it adds a dimension if you do.

The poem itself consists of 60 unrhymed quatrains, many broken mid line by the asterisks that divide  … Continue Reading

PN Review subscribers can read the review which appeared in PN Review 254 by clicking here.