The title sequence, written in three voices, is based on what is known and what is not known about the marriage of the poet’s mother, in May 1945, to a wartime airman who was already married.

The other poems continue to concern themselves with remembering. And consequently, with love too. Its ability to eclipse time. The ways it can take us, leave us, and be returned to us—in the ordinary places, in handwriting, doorways and dreams, in the song of a blackbird. Love’s stubborn, startling persistence.

Joan Johnston was born in Newcastle. For the last 20 years she has worked as a writer in hospitals, prisons, day-centres and schools, and with women’s groups, the elderly and the homeless. She currently teaches creative writing with Adult Learning & Skills in Gateshead. Joan is a recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship and her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her previous poetry collections include Breathing In (1997), What You Want (1998) and Orange for the Sun (2005).