I Wanted to Ask You

Salome Benidze is one of Georgia’s rising literary stars. In this selection of poems, she explores romantic love and all its corollaries: longing, regret, trauma, confession, revelation, even war. Her poems, plainly written but heavy with feeling, hold our gaze and address us directly. The luminous English translations in this bilingual chapbook have been prepared by leading Georgian translator Natalia Bukia-Peters, working with acclaimed British poet Helen Mort (Division Street; No Map Could Show Them).

"Benidze’s girls and women seem fragile things that hang on threads of love, and crash when the threads are broken."
- Adham Smart, Modern Poetry in Translation