Petr Hruška is one of few Czech poets whose work is recognized beyond the Czech border. He headed to the North West and Scotland directly from the London Book Fair. In Manchester, reading of his poems was the hightlight of a poetry reading evening which included three local poets: Jazmine Linklater, John McAuliffe a Sarah-Clare Conlon. Similarly arranged evening in Glasgow included also Petra Johana Poncarová, apart from two local authors Roba Mackenzie and Gerald Mangan. A leading Czech expert on Scottish Gaelic, Petra Johana Poncarová read several of her poems written in this Celtic language for the first time on this opportunity.

Both evening represented a special occasion for both the connoisseurs of poetry and those for whom a lot still remains to be discovered in this field. There not many collections of poems by Czech contemporary authors translated into English. It is mainly thanks to the activities of Jan Zikmund, a committed promoter of Czech literature in the English speaking world, that there is so much interest in Petr Hruška and the translation of his latest work in the UK.