Absence

Absence, the third title in CHEERIO's acclaimed poetry series, is a book about nothing. Or nothings: losses, vacua, gaps.

From the desolation at the heat-death of the universe to the impassable distance between two people talking, and from the trust exercise of walking in darkness to experiments on the vacuum, Absence searches for what's missing and what we never had.

Starting with the problem of how to represent that which isn't there, and ending with the end of love, Absence takes in the ache for a vanished god, the permanently delayed doomsday of millenarian cults, and the overflowing life inside our seemingly empty buckets and stomachs.

Ali Lewis's poems mirror, undermine, reframe and rephrase each other in a voice that feels as precise and scientific as it is playful and warm. Absence is both intricate and ambitious, comic and tragic.

It is a book of restless curiosity and revelation.

'Deft, ingenious, funny and metaphysically gymnastic. What an absolute gift it is.' — Abigail Parry

'I love this. Ali Lewis's poems have an unparaphrasable quality, as if they're not read but inhaled, like a clear vapour which leaves you giddy, tranquil and troubled all at once. Read it, you'll see what I mean.' — Caroline Bird