Emerging from an experimental collaboration among seven female poets, Metropoetica is an innovative collection of multilingual poetry, complemented by modern critical theory and visual art. The project's central concept is an interactive and collective one: 'Explore a city you don't know using an online map. Choose a route for a walk. Send it to a poet who lives there. She follows your directions and writes a poem.'In their physical and imaginative exploration of European cities, these women explore the relationship between modern urban and textual landscapes. Cities, like the languages we use to represent them, are characterised by their layered, fluid and multifarious personalities. What they symbolise is ever-changing and subjective.

With the purpose of describing their surroundings, these poets intentionally slow down the excessive pace at which the city is normally perceived and bring it to one that coincides with the rhythms of the individual. In this way, smaller visual details, sensations and chance moments can be appreciated and, as a result, the poems achieve a sense of immediacy, spontaneity and honesty. All these poems depict interesting and transformative intersections between natural and social elements. The atmosphere of an urban environment is constantly altered by the subtle influence of light, colour, animals and dialogue. By translating each other's work, the writers aim to pluralise that work's meaning, rather than to simply duplicate it in another language. Despite the fact that many readers won't be able to understand the foreign-language poetry, the inclusion of these poems remains essential for understanding the creative processes involved in this collection. The poems are a dialogue in which the poets respond to, and build upon, each other's experiences and impressions. The project's documentary-style photography, an effective visual accompaniment to the textual representations, helps to make the foreign-language poetry more accessible to the reader.

Similarly, by including critical theory and explanatory text, Metropoetica encourages the reader to appreciate the linguistic, literary and social context from which the project's aims have come. With its contemporary approach to the writing process, Metropoetica delivers interesting and unique results with respect to poetic form, content and motive. This collection reveals that cities and poetry offer very similar worlds: they both encourage their inhabitants to defamiliarise themselves with their surroundings, get lost on undiscovered routes and arrive at any of the infinite number of destinations available to them. Pearl NewtonIt is possible to use this review for promotional purposes, but the following acknowledgment should be included: A review from www.gwales.com , with the permission of the Welsh Books Council. Gellir defnyddio'r adolygiad hwn at bwrpas hybu, ond gofynnir i chi gynnwys y gydnabyddiaeth ganlynol: Adolygiad oddi ar www.gwales.

com , trwy ganiatd Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru.