A Scattering and Anniversary

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.