The Assay

"I like the way good food and diction go together so clearly... The poems are different to what one normally gets in English, the issues far bigger, as in 'Dhimmi Under Sharia Law' (A Lawyer's Poem) and in many others that one may benefit from." - Alan Sillitoe"These enthralling and lovely poems begin with rich recollections of another country ( so we ate, so we loved ), but darken into the shock of domestic violence. Her poems are absolutely straightforward to read, but quite unforgettable." - Alison Brackenbury"Yvonne Green takes us into the unfamilar world of Boukhara and Judeo Tajik culture with complete assurance.

For all the lucidity of her poetry, her work has an unusual density. This is a fine new voice, which deserves to be widely heard." - Elaine Feinstein"Yvonne Green's poems are strange, evoking unfamiliar worlds and seeing them with their own kind of language. She effaces their merely subjective self and her poems get into their subjects.

What matters is the voices out there, and she hears them. There is so much world, so many stories, included here. It is wonderful to encounter this vivid annex to experience and understanding." - Michael Schmidt

Yvonne Green who lives in Hendon and Herzilia was born in London in 1957. Her first collection, "Boukhara", won a Poetry Business Pamphlet award in 2007. Her second collection, "The Assay", won translation funds from Lord Gavron and Celia Atkin and was published in Hebrew by Am Oved as "Hanisu Yi". Her third collection, "After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin", was the Poetry Book Society's Translation Choice for Winter in 2011. Her poem, 'Welcome To Britain', was commended in the Buxton Poetry Competition 2012. She has reviewed for the London Magazine, interviewed for PN Review, contributed to the 2015 "Penguin Book of Russian Poetry" and broadcast on Radio 4.