Days & Days & DaysBibbs is just about to turn thirty nine. She has been a reality show star but the good life is beginning to slip through her fingers and there seems to be a never ending flow of unexpected expenditures. Her boyfriend, Baby, has always provided stability and when he dumps her out of the blue, she is also faced with an ultimatum: if she wants to keep the flat she must pay 100 000 Krona within a week. She no longer has access to that kind of money and

Occasional verse

Translated by Roger Allen

from the ‘scabrous hope’ of new love through painful eroticism and loss

at the heart of each of Saphra’s poems is a delicate filament kicking out a heavy-duty wattage

Danny Abse

a young British Communist

the poems dart across a fractured and eclectic terrain: from quantum mechanics

Valerie is also a freelance writer and editor for Bedford/St Martin's Press

sets off to learn about Redemption for himself

• Poems by four modernist poets – Khaled Mattawa

while Saadi Youssef pays tribute to his fellow countryman the novelist Mahdi Issa al-Saqr (1930-2006)

who fell in love with a woman from this constantly beguiling Black Sea port and started a family there