"Smoke Rising is a documentary poem. Very much in the tradition of Charles Reznikoff{u2019}s Testimony, it utilises oral sources to capture the speech {u2013} and perhaps the experience - of those who suffered the London Blitz. However, its elective affinities are also to Walter Benjamin{u2019}s great unfinished Arcades Project: "to carry the principle of montage into history {u2026} to assemble large-scale constructions out of the smallest and most precisely cut components {u2026} to discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event." -- Publisher's website.