In the Kingdom of Light represents the remarkable irruption of MG Smith's poetry in the time between his leaving Jamaica College and his absorption in the world of academia in the UK- a period of some seven years spanning the Second World War. The arc they describe is admittedly tragic: there is evidence that, early on, smith fell deeply in love, a love that was incapable of expression in “the real world”, since the beloved was securely married; and so the poetry increasingly came to exhibit the eliac note of a love bound up in the prospect of its loss.