An exploration of love and loss by the renowned Costa Award-winning poet
You lived at such speed that the ballpoint script
running aslant and fading
across the faded blue
can scarcely keep up. Many words are illegible. I miss
important steps. Your movements blur. I want to follow, but can't.
A Scattering is a book of lamentation and remembrance, its subject being Christopher Reid's wife, the actress Lucinda Gane, who died of cancer at the age of fifty-five. First published in the UK in 2009 to wide acclaim, winning the Costa Book of the Year, this moving and fiercely self-reflective collection is divided into four poetic sequences. The first was written during a holiday a few months before Gane's death with the knowledge that the end was approaching; the second recalls her last courageous weeks, spent in a hospice in London; the third continues the exploration of bereavement from a variety of perspectives; and the fourth addresses her directly, celebrating her life, personality, and achievements.
Paired for the first time with Anniversary, which was written to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Gane's death, A Scattering and Anniversary brings the poet into dialogue, again, with the wife he loved. A moving exploration of the stages of grief and how the "weighty emptinesses" that remain after bereavement change us, A Scattering and Anniversary shows us what it means to love, lose, and--forever changed--continue on.
Award winning indie publisher | Lay out your unrest | Widening access to the arts | Editor: @GodzillaKent | For reviews: stuart@brokensleepbooks.com
The high energy of Cliff Forshaw’s poems makes me think particularly of John Donne and the other Metaphysicals: argument, wit, erudition, and force of feeling all working to convey an authentic vision of the world we live in. — Christopher Reid https://t.co/GAeVrsMncI https://t.co/swwWWZtR3q
Rishi Dastidar is a poet and editor.
And I read this new one from Christopher Reid over Christmas, and it’s a lovely jewel of a collection; the music of the poems braid with his memories to create a quite wonderful portrait of a young man, and what survives of him into later years. A real treat this. https://t.co/6jc7UuG3su
PhD: Ecopoetics of Robert Frost. Poet. Impermanence (2020) @MaytreePoetry Kayfabe (2021) & Knife Edge (2022) @BrokenSleep Runs @Nine_pens Waterfall bagger.
I’m up to 1997 with the Forward Anthologies. Full of great poems such as this from Christopher Reid. 🐩 🐕 https://t.co/CjRZTk6a87