The Blue Dress (Marie Alexander Poetry Series) - Softcover

"The project of Alison Townsend's poetry is to chart a course through the deepest of losses--to attempt some safe passage through a lifetime's erasures. Intimate, warm and observant, this book involves us in the inscription of a life."

In this quiet, clear-eyed collection Townsend meditates on the varieties of loss, childhood bereavement, depression and divorce to arrive at the realisation that it is through loss that we come into possession of some of life's most profound gifts. She articulates what it was like to grow up motherless, explores life in a step-family, scrutinises depression, breaks codes of feminine silence, and celebrates the enduring power of place.