"These poems are very moving and it's hard to do justice to the way Caroline Smith conveys the anxieties, hopes and disappointments experienced by immigrants. She never allows the reader to forget that behind the refugee statistics there are suffering human beings; very often the victims of a seemingly insensitive and overstretched bureaucracy." - Lord Alf Dubs "The detail is magnificent ...there is an implicit tenderness and stoicism inthe lives of these characters which shines through." - Angela Platt, Orbis Vividly detailed and emotionally powerful, The Immigration Handbook is as revealing as it is timely. Here we meet with the individuals that the news stories only speak of as numbers. These are lives fraught with violence and tragedy that Caroline Smith has encountered in her work as the asylum caseworker for a London MP. We journey with them through the labyrinthine government bureaucracies they must navigate to survive. With clarity and integrity she lays before us stories of stoic resilience and humorous forbearance, of kindness to others and of joy in the midst of sorrow. These are poems that step out of the headlines and into our hearts.

Caroline Smith was born in Ilford and grew up in Hertfordshire. She originally trained as a sculptor at Goldsmith's College. 'The Thistles of the Hesperides', her first full collection, is about the community of West Pilton in Scotland where she lived in the 1980s when it was one of the most deprived housing estates in Europe. Published widely in literary journals, Caroline Smith has twice won prizes in the Troubadour Poetry Competition. Smith has had work set to music, broadcast on the BBC and is also the author of 'The Bedseller's Tale', a musical play performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.