Kirjahaku

In the face of fire, flood, plague, environmental catastrophe and political chaos the challenge is that poetry, in Auden's words, 'show an affirming flame'. The poems in The Dancing Man are an attempt to move from grief and loss towards consolations, however limited these might be. Intimations of connection and inter-dependence between all living things is the fragile basis for a first step towards spiritual re-orientation and an art of hope.

This Cathedral Grief responds to the death of Adrian Caesar's sister, Karen, from pancreatic cancer in 2012-13. This book explores various dimensions of faith - secular, artistic and spiritual - in an attempt to wrest meaning from the blank of loss. Without supporting any single position or belief, these poems are provisional statements, charting the impossibility of celebrating or memorialising someone successfully, much less recovering that person through language.

In the voices of a brother and sister, the poems in Sky Writing tell of a tragic love story from different perspectives. The life of an RAF pilot, friend to the brother, lover to the sister, comes to a premature end in a flying accident. The poems explore the collision of romantic love with the doomed romance of military service and provide an elegiac refrain for both. Kat Rae's artistic response to the poems expands and enhances their significance, providing a vivid and thought-provoking complementary visual experience. Taken together, the poems and images create an alternative memorial to more traditional modes of remembrance.