Tim Youngs


Professor Tim Youngs explores the creative and critical implications of writing travel and actively encourages multi and cross-disciplinary approaches to the field. He defines travel writing broadly, although with the understanding that it relates to real journeys undertaken by the authors themselves. The author and editor of several books on travel writing, his poems are published in several print and online magazines, including The Interpreter’s House, Staple and Poetry Salzburg.

 


Tête-à-tête in Bucharest

for Michaela

The heart’s an over-determined organ,
you remarked at dinner, hailing the mind
as the tool by which poetry is learned.

That later I saw your stone eyes glisten
does not disprove you, but suggests a thought:
a metaphor of thaw in this nation
adapting to its post-communist face,

or of how deep insecurity
projects itself onto every place.

First published in Message in a Bottle