Beyond the Lion Gate, 2023
A novel, set in Albania in the late 1990s. The country is going through a turbulent time of transition, with a broken infrastructure and criminal gangs settling scores in the streets of Tirana. Paula, the narrator, arrives in winter to work for an aid organisation.
Tirana could also be called the city of rumours, as it is often hard to find out the truth about individuals and organisations, including the one Paula works for. It seems that everyone – and soon that will include her – has something to hide. But the country grows on her, the people, the history, and the dramatic landscape. Through a particular relationship Paula experiences the ambiguous nature of love, both its appearance and its reality. Its presence and its absence.
The Lion Gate is a stone threshold, part of the classical ruins of Butrint, in the south of Albania. It is possible that all portals can alter the perceptions of people who pass through them.
Tirana could also be called the city of rumours, as it is often hard to find out the truth about individuals and organisations, including the one Paula works for. It seems that everyone – and soon that will include her – has something to hide. But the country grows on her, the people, the history, and the dramatic landscape. Through a particular relationship Paula experiences the ambiguous nature of love, both its appearance and its reality. Its presence and its absence.
The Lion Gate is a stone threshold, part of the classical ruins of Butrint, in the south of Albania. It is possible that all portals can alter the perceptions of people who pass through them.
the writing is beautiful Tom Chivers
This is not just a novel, it is a hymn to the elements, an evocation of a foreign place, a long meditation on the possibilities - and impossibilities - of love between two people. Just as with her previous book, The Buoyancy of the Craft, Morelle Smith surprises us by offering something beyond the genre. Her metaphors wash over us and take us to places and people we too have longed for, and to human entanglements that still puzzle. S D Curtis, publisher and author
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The Buoyancy of the Craft
ISBN 978 1 913106 57 7
Published by diehard, Callander, 2021
A biographical narrative based on the life of Annemarie Schwarzenbach, 1908 – 1942, a Swiss writer, photo-journalist
and traveller.
Domnique Laure Miermont, her translator into French, and biographer, wrote that she is 'Recognized today as one of the three great Swiss travel writers of the twentieth century’ (along with Ella Maillart and Nicolas Bouvier). In her short lifetime, Annemarie wrote several books, novels and travel accounts, as well as hundreds of articles for the Swiss press.
Annemarie's travels took her through Europe, across Asia to Afghanistan with Ella Maillart, through the southern states of the USA with the photographer Barbara Wright, and into the heart of Africa, in the Belgian Congo. Wherever she travelled, she wrote articles for the press; the countries she travelled through would sometimes also inspire stories, novels and récits de voyages.
The book is based on episodes from her life, sourced from her own writing, some of which – novels and short stories – I look at in some detail.
I also look at some of the people who played important roles in her life, writers, travellers and photographers, including Klaus and Erika Mann, Ella Maillart, Claude Bourdet, & Marianne Breslauer.
I started it yesterday and am gripped. I don’t want it to finish! Vesna Goldsworthy
a compelling subject written with such intuitive understanding. I was gripped from the start by Annemarie's spiritual journey towards a sense of self-reconciliation. A C Clarke (poet)
The Buoyancy of the Craft is a daring and sometimes disturbing exploration of the dimensions – ultimately immeasurable – of the human spirit.
James Aitchison (poet)
a compelling subject written with such intuitive understanding. I was gripped from the start by Annemarie's spiritual journey towards a sense of self-reconciliation. A C Clarke (poet)
The Buoyancy of the Craft is a daring and sometimes disturbing exploration of the dimensions – ultimately immeasurable – of the human spirit.
James Aitchison (poet)
You can read an essay about her in Crannog online
You can read an excerpt published in Scottish Review here.
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The Midnight Man
Novella
(bi-lingual English/Romanian)
£6.99
ISBN 978 606 13 4556 4
Published by Bibliotheca Universalis, Bucharest, 2018
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Shaping the Water Path
In 3 sections, Poems of Scotland, Further Travel & Prose Poems. The cover design is an overlay of 2 photographs: the sea at Crete, and a room in The Art Book Museum in Lodz, Poland, which is referred to in the title piece.
Poetry Collection
ISBN 978 0946230 98 3
published by diehard, Callander, 2017
In 3 sections, Poems of Scotland, Further Travel & Prose Poems. The cover design is an overlay of 2 photographs: the sea at Crete, and a room in The Art Book Museum in Lodz, Poland, which is referred to in the title piece.
Great sensitivity, delicacy and strength of language in Smith’s fine collection. Geraldine Green
this is a lovely volume, outside and in! Smith is a travel writer as well as a poet, and travel and place strongly informs this collection. And place can also be people, weather, and the life of all kinds that inhabits our natural world. The touch of this expert is a light one. Alison Craig in Bottle Imp (Association of Scottish Literary Studies)
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Open Roads and Secret Destinations
Travel Essays from Europe (France, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Austria, Greece)
(bi-lingual English/Romanian)
ISBN 978 606 13 2844 4
Published by Bibliotheca Universalis, Bucharest, 2016
Travel Essays from Europe (France, Albania, Kosovo, Serbia, Austria, Greece)
(bi-lingual English/Romanian)
ISBN 978 606 13 2844 4
Published by Bibliotheca Universalis, Bucharest, 2016
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Every Shade of Blue: Travels with a Musician
Travel Journals in Europe and USA
ISBN 978 0 9927233 3 0
Published by Kairos, 2015
Travel Journals in Europe and USA
ISBN 978 0 9927233 3 0
Published by Kairos, 2015
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The Definition of Happiness
Poetry Collection (bi-lingual English/Romanian)
ISBN 978 606 13 2385 2
Published by Bibliotheca Universalis, Bucharest, 2015
Poetry Collection (bi-lingual English/Romanian)
ISBN 978 606 13 2385 2
Published by Bibliotheca Universalis, Bucharest, 2015
exceptional gifts of rhythm, imagination and description. Fred
Beake in Acumen Magazine
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Tirana Papers: An Albanian Journal
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Tirana Papers: An Albanian Journal
ISBN 978 0 9552896 9 9
In 2000 Edi Rama, then mayor of Tirana (later to become Prime Minister) described the city as being 'like a medieval tavern'. Albania had recently emerged from a repressive communist regime followed by civil breakdown after the collapse of pyramid schemes. In 2000, streets are full of potholes, overflowing rubbish bins are set alight, and while some buildings are bulldozed, tower blocks are growing in vacant lots as fast as magic beanstalks. Foreigners working in Tirana are advised not to go out in the unlit streets at night, as a significant proportion of the population is armed.
This book captures the mood of Albania, certainly
Excerpt from The Via Egnatia and the Other Reality
An old woman, bent over from a huge sack piled on her back, rummages through the litter bin. The water from the broken pipe has filled the hole in the street and overflowed into the road. Two boys float toy boats, tied to string, on the murky lake that the road has turned into. In the rooster street, with the thin strip of muddy, rubbish-clogged yard, where the hens and roosters peck, a scrawny tree has burst into white blossom, a sudden spillage of emotion, a rustle of light against the flaky grey grime of the buildings.
In 2000 Edi Rama, then mayor of Tirana (later to become Prime Minister) described the city as being 'like a medieval tavern'. Albania had recently emerged from a repressive communist regime followed by civil breakdown after the collapse of pyramid schemes. In 2000, streets are full of potholes, overflowing rubbish bins are set alight, and while some buildings are bulldozed, tower blocks are growing in vacant lots as fast as magic beanstalks. Foreigners working in Tirana are advised not to go out in the unlit streets at night, as a significant proportion of the population is armed.
From
the history of brigand ruler Ali Pasha, to the ‘semi-divine’
nature of the guest laid down in the Kanun, Albanian myth and
folklore live on in the present day. In Tirana Papers we discover the
mountains of the Via Egnatia, the coast of the limpid Ionian Sea, the
old Ottoman houses of Gjirokaster and the classical ruins of Butrint.
While
today's Tirana has green parks, smooth roads and bright lights, its
streets full of cafés, shops and restaurants, in Tirana
Papers
we encounter Albania's capital in its brief time of transition, a
city edged with chaos, rumour and danger.
This book captures the mood of Albania, certainly
Robert
Carver, author of The
Accursed Mountains
Excerpt from The Via Egnatia and the Other Reality
On
the way back from Elbasan Gramoz, our driver, stops and buys some purple flowers.
The clouds have gone, the sun is out. Some of the peaks, still capped
with snow, are dazzling in this light. We seem to be higher up than
everything that’s visible.
In Tirana, the evening sunlight catches pieces of buildings, clutches
at them, in some rosy sense of memory – walls turn deep and
mysterious, puddles become wells of gold and the few soft,
green-feathered branches of drifting trees, shine in the evening
glow. We drive slowly through the narrow back lanes, swaying up and
down with each pothole.
In
the twilight, when I walk down the steps from the office, a rat
saunters across the path below. Mattresses, chairs, boots, tiles, and
pieces of wood are piled up in the river.
An old woman, bent over from a huge sack piled on her back, rummages through the litter bin. The water from the broken pipe has filled the hole in the street and overflowed into the road. Two boys float toy boats, tied to string, on the murky lake that the road has turned into. In the rooster street, with the thin strip of muddy, rubbish-clogged yard, where the hens and roosters peck, a scrawny tree has burst into white blossom, a sudden spillage of emotion, a rustle of light against the flaky grey grime of the buildings.
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Gold Tracks, Fallen Fruit, a Quinta Journal
Poetry and images
published in 2011 by Cestrian Press
ISBN 978 0 904448 37 1Poetry and images
published in 2011 by Cestrian Press
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Time Loop
novel published in 2010 by Playback Editions
ISBN 978-0-9558905-2-9
Set partly in 13th century France and partly in fin de siecle
(20th century) Scotland, the novel explores the effects on people who
unexpectedly tapped into Cathar knowledge. The Cathars lived in
south-west France, the Languedoc, in the 12th and 13th centuries. The
Roman Church called them heretics and, together with the then King of
France, waged a crusade against them. The castle of Monsegur was the
last Cathar castle to be besieged by the crusaders, in 1244. But at the
end of the 20th century, Helga finds that the past has its own purposes,
surfacing in the present.
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The Way Words Travel
poetry collection published in 2005 by UK Author Press
poetry collection published in 2005 by UK Author Press
ISBN 1-904781-46-2
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Streets of Tirana, Almost Spring
short stories
Published 2004 by Ora, Tirana (bi-lingual English/Albanian)
ISBN 99927-940-6-2
Published 2004 by Ora, Tirana (bi-lingual English/Albanian)
ISBN 99927-940-6-2
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Deepwater Terminal
Excerpt from Deepwater Terminal
Highland
Snow on the high mountains
is smoothed by the wind.
The white folds of winter
fray into yellow grass
and sleeping heather.
There is no tree between me and the mountain.
Only the wind combing the marsh grass.
A ledge of snow forms a step to the house
and the sunlight trips, on its way to the ground.