Descriptions, Reviews, etc.
Description:
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.
Brief description:
Christopher Reid is Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary, University of London. A former poetry editor at Faber and Faber, he worked with Ted Hughes on Tales of Ovid and Birthday Letters among other books. A Costa Award-winning poet, Christopher is the author of A Scattering and Anniversary and The Song of Lunch.
