Messages to Federico

The great Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca was assassinated by Franco's Falangists in an orchard outside Granada in 1936. This book of poems, a lament for his death which is also a tribute to his extraordinary lyrical gifts, is spoken by his imagined lover. It conjures, fleetingly, poignantly, the irrepressible gusto of his life: his gifts as a pianist, the dancing humour of his poetry for children, the street life of his beloved Granada, his brutal and incomprehensible death. Above all, it interrogates Death itself for its bewildering decision to snatch him away at the height of his powers.