A small museum and a statue in central Puka are dedicated to Millosh Gjergj Nikolla, better known as Migjeni, Albania's 'poet of the poor' who lived his short life from 1911 to 1938. He never managed to publish a book, but his important work still kick-started contemporary Albanian poetry. Migjeni was born in Shkodra and at 14 went to study Russian, French, Greek and Latin in Bitola, now in Macedonia. On his return to Shkodra he gave up on becoming a priest and became a teacher, and started writing poems and prose in Albanian. In 1936 a planned book containing 36 poems called Vargjet e Lira (Free Verse) was banned - it was only reprinted in 1944 with some 'inappropriate' poems deleted and others added. In 1935, Migjeni fell ill with tuberculosis, and after visiting sanatoriums in Greece and Italy spent 1936 and 1937 working as a head teacher in Puka, where he wrote several of his better-known poems. Soon after he left he died in an Italian hospital at the age of 26. His work consists of just 24 short prose sketches and 44 poems. Whereas most poets from the regions stuck to describing the beauties of the Albanian mountains and the sacred traditions of the nation, Migjeni focused on misery and suffering: "Poverty, brothers, is a mouthful that's hard to swallow / A bite that sticks in your throat and leaves you in sorrow / When you watch the pale faces and rheumy eyes / Observing you like ghosts and holding out thin hands; / Behind you they lie, stretched out / Their whole lives through, until the moment of death." Migjeni's poems were successful in literary circles, and ironically when his book finally did appear, it was in the same year that Stalinism was decided to be the best way forward in Albania. Puka's Migjeni Museum has photos and classroom items illustrating Migjeni's life, and his time in Puka. We're grateful to the late Robert Elsie (www.elsie.de) for the biography and translation.