Sarah Arvio is a highly original American poet. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed her reading her poems at a friend's apartment in New York City in September 2008. Composed during a long stay in Rome, the cantos of her latest book SONO (2006) look outward in order to look inward, transforming sights and stories into expressionistic explorations of the state of the heart. Playful, probing, philosophical, colourful, often funny, they describe a struggle to come to terms with loss and grief and to find a basis for renewal. In VISITS FROM THE SEVENTH (2002), her wry, uncanny poems take the form of conversations between a woman and a throng of invisible presences, or ‘visitors’, who counsel, challenge, cajole and comfort her. Her first book to be published in the UK was SONO, WITH VISITS FROM THE SEVENTH (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), including the whole of SONO (2006) - read on an accompanying CD - and a selection from VISITS FROM THE SEVENTH (2002), both published by Knopf in the US. In this film she reads three poems from SONO ('Colosseum', 'Bomb' and 'Acrolith') followed by two poems from VISITS FROM THE SEVENTH ('Floating' and 'Ellipses'). Pamela Robertson-Pearce has been filming poets reading their work for Bloodaxe's archive, website and DVD-books. Her first DVD-book, IN PERSON (edited by Neil Astley), was published by Bloodaxe in 2008, including films of 30 poets with an anthology containing all the poems read on the films.