Sweeping the Light Back Into the Mirror

No. 08every word we ever said to each otherlaid side by side on the white grasseach tied with a single strand of your black hairSweeping the Light Back Into the Mirror is an extended elegy and memorial for the poet’s mother. Brief, epigrammic aphorisms are contrasted with longer poems, some of which are about the commonplace aspects of a lived life: old shoes, the family stove, handwritten letters, and some of which move resolutely into elegiac record. 'This moving and infinitely sustained sequence demonstrates a powerful talent and a masterful command of the large-scale architecture of a long sequence.’THOMAS SHAPCOTT'Shepherdson’s virtuosic interplay is evident in nearly every line and in the way the poems build and gather momentum and dynamic tension. The poet uses language to keep perception and the unutterable alive.’JUDITH BEVERIDGE