Missing - Softcover

Malcolm Povey began writing these poems when Jackie, his wife of forty years, a teacher, painter, and print-maker, was diagnosed with cancer. After her death in 2008 he found himself stranded on grief's glacier', adrift on loss and loneliness' and talking to his dead wife. Missing is part of that continuing conversation. Refusing the consolations of religion, or comforting ideas about an afterlife or an immortal soul, he forces himself to contemplate the unbearable facts of death, and that his wife is now beneath six feet of indifferent earth', her loveliness gone underground'. Missing is a book about illness, death, loss, and the meanings we seek in death and find in life.

Malcolm Povey taught until recently at Bournemouth University. His first collection Sedgemoor was published by Smokestack Books in 2006. He lives in Bournemouth.