Goesta Agren has developed an intellectually austere form of aphorism-lyric, which in its concentration and imagistic density looks both inwards to the metaphysical traditions of Finland-Swedish modernism and outwards to contemporary English-language poetry, especially that of R.S. Thomas. His work is featured in David McDuff's Finland-Swedish anthology Ice Around Our Lips: 'Goesta Agren is the real discovery: an Ostrobothnian quasi-sep-aratist Marxist, he is heavily influenced by R.S. Thomas, but his taut, muscley, short lines remind me, too, of Edward Bond, prismed through a totally Finland-Swedish consciousness... Goesta Agren has absorbed his modernist predecessors...tough, but compassionate... abstract and imagistic and sensual. He feels like a major poet.' - Adam Thorpe, Poetry Review A Valley in the Midst of Violence is based mainly on the collections Cloud Summer (Molnsommar, 1978), Poems in Black and White (Dikter i svartvitt, 1980), That Which Always Is (Det som alltid ar, 1982), and The Other God (Den andre guden, 1985). The poems are grouped by Agren in titled sections which refer to theme, and are not the titles of the original collections.