Books in the Sheila-Na-Gig Editions series

Marc Swan writes, "For me the election of 2016 was a turning point. I never imagined the world could become what it has-it takes my breath away. The book started with political poems then expanded into reflections on the day-to-day: the good, the not-so-good, hopes, fears, uncertainties we now call contemporary life."

The lyric poems that compose the three parts of The Shape of Emptiness, while each distinct, work in concert like the near invisible lines of an orb-weaver who tacks her continuous silk to the spokes of a web, beginning at the center, spiraling ever outward and then returning to center again. At the outset the poems explore the poet's core relationship with her father and his haunting absence. Then they touch upon the tragedy of suicide and her mother's troubled mind and heart. A hunger for connection runs through all the poems informed by the meditations and urgencies of the soul. In the last section of the book the poems draw upon the experiences that bind the poet to her husband, daughter and animal companions, in ways that open toward the greater fabric of nature of which we are all a part. Throughout the book, the delicate yet resilient strands between nature and human concerns are tested, explored, mourned where they have been torn, and celebrated where they hold, as revelatory and healing.