'To describe Alan Ross as a polymath does scant justice to the eclecticism of an extraordinary man . Ross was a war hero, poet, bon viveur, travel writer, incorrigible gossip, racehorse owner and brilliant magazine editor.' Richard Whitehead, Observer After Pusan , first published in 1995, is the third panel (alongside Blindfold Games and Coastwise Lights , also in Faber Finds) of a triptych of memoirs by Alan Ross. Inspired by Ross's visit in 1986 to the South Korean coastal city of Pusan, like its predecessors it gracefully entwines poetry and prose. ' After Pusan opens with a thirty-page prose memoir of [Ross's] visit, economically and self-effacingly told, deft in its detail and tireless in its curiosity. This memoir is more than merely an adjunct to Ross's other travel writings, though, and more than only a prelude to the poems which fill the rest of these hundred pages. After Pusan breaks a long silence in his life as a poet; and it was that visit to Korea. that suggested to him 'that if poetry was ever going to come again it might do so now.

' PN Review.