Contraband of Hoopoe explores issues of dislocation, immigration and desire. Chrusciel invents a poetics of smuggling as she crosses national, historical and linguistic borders. The migratory narrative is distinctly errant, haunted by a childhood lived under a Communist regime, by the austerity of Eastern block politics, and by the possibility of discovering a fleeting language to carry the seeds of illicit revelation, spiritual transformation, and insight. The book elevates smuggling to a noble art, recording how the Jewish people were hidden and transported during the Holocaust. Chrusciel tracks a series of historical objects and secret messages that immigrants throughout history have been sneaking through customs, past border checkpoints, and across the seas.

EWA CHRUSCIEL has two books in Polish, Furkot and Sopilki, and one in English, Strata, which won the 2009 Emergency Press International Book Contest. Her poems have appeared in many journals in Poland, England, Italy, and the U.S., including jubilat, Boston Review, Colorado Review, and Lana Turner. She translated Jack London, Joseph Conrad, I.B. Singer, and several contemporary American poets into Polish. She is associate professor of humanities at Colby-Sawyer College.