Guest and Host: Poems from Calcutta

"Guest and Host" records the experience of being welcomed into the household of a foreign country. At some distance from the travel-book viewpoint of the outsider-looking-in, Winter is able to capture the country in a deeper light through staying rather than travelling, and living rather than merely observing. The sonnet-sequence "Guest and Host" is complemented by a powerful poem on the 2001 earthquake at Kutch; a fascinating sequence based on the reminiscences of an infantry officer of the British Raj; and, a dramatic poem on Durga, the goddess of Calcutta's annual festival of Durga Puja.