The Magpie and the Child

The Magpie and the Child tells a story of great loss, love, and learning. The volume starts from the days before the poetic journey, in a sort of pre-exploration of events before they were events, moving to and through the death of her child Emily at almost eleven years old from an unsuspected heart condition. The poems speak, lament, and sing among the metaphors and religious resonances that such mourning must inspire. The thieving magpie of the prefatory title poem pecks at its own image ...