A few weeks ago, I picked up a slim book of poetry by Gioconda Belli, which I'd spotted, hidden in the shelves of a tiny news stand, whilst I was roaming the small shopping area of Managua airport's departure lounge.

Nicaragua relishes poetry; as much as it can be said to be the Land of Volcanoes - pockmarked with flooded extinct craters, and those that still froth and smoke, and occasionally vomit - it is a nation that celebrates the sensuous imagery and the exquisite concision of meaning that only poetry is capable of.

The nation's politics are complicated (and never free from interference); it's landscape apt to writhe and wriggle; but poets are it's life force, able to sketch the struggles, the joys, the complex human comedy we find ourselves in, with the passion and intensity that Life in all it's ragged glory requires.

There is a line from one Gioconda Belli's poems (the anthology, incidentally is called From Eve's Rib) that stops me in my tracks, nine simple words: "God carved into me a workshop for human beings".

I love that image of a womb as a workshop for new humans. And I see a sadness in there too; there are women I know who have dreamed of forging new lifes in the crucible of their bodies, except that circumstance has not allowed the work to start.

As a man, I thank poetry for this insight wrapped in a metaphor that is unforgettable.