JAMES SUTHERLAND-SMITH
POET, TRANSLATOR, CRITIC
Welcome to my website.
Here is my my latest book, Cobweb / Pavučinka, a bilingual edition published by Horská lucerna in September 2026





















  WEB

The storm dawdles behind the ridge
that hides the south from me,
a glower above beech and spruce
with crude webs of lightning
that form, fizz and fray while rain bangs
a passionate measure
on the panels roofing my deck.

Almost-invisibilities
attach a web to the pillars
that keep roof and gutter over me.
I’ve counted twenty-eight
divisions radiating out,
a polygon of spit,
glinting as lightning flickers,

whose threads have enough give and take
to hold the shaking web
and the spider at its centre.
I think thought is like this,
then understand it isn’t thought
but what comes after thought
begins and before thought has done:

stillness, impulse, a rapid act
which doesn’t shift the spider
even though wind gusts exaggerate
the web this way and that.
How can a spider know weather
from individual
struggles of lacewing, midge or moth?

Can the spider and its web survive?
All night the rain pelts down
as I lie awake recalling
your goodbye, lips on mine,
hardly a kiss, hardly a thought.
By morning it seems, save
for a torn edge, the web has held.


from Cobweb / Pavučinka

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