Drawing upon her experiences as a worker in Russia and the worldly attitudes of artist J. M. W. Turner for inspiration, Sasha Dugdale links the poems in this collection through her belief in the creative power of artist and writer to not only record but also to transform reality. She writes of Russian lives with a knowledgeable insight, finding beauty and humanity in what at first appears bleak and desperate; of relationships; and of questions of identity. She is the observer, a woman standing alone as a crowd surges around her.