A Second Whisper

A Second Whisper is a thoughtful and sensitive collection of poems that reflect the changing identities of a woman: in motherhood, in widowhood, in friendship and grief. There are elegies to the loss of her mentor and partner, the poet Dannie Abse in 2014 which are a tribute to their deep friendship. There are also poems to her late husband who died in 2006 and for their children and for relationships from the author's past in New York City and Denmark. The poems are both elegiac and celebratory, they move and change tone as the author travels to the past and negotiates through the geography of grief and feelings of displacement in London and finally, opens to her new life in the present.
Such a beautiful collection that I read it at one stretch. In language whose easy music sounds like thinking, these poems tell the story of a special late love after bereavement, as well as of loves of all kinds, and the very experience of being alive. – Gillian Clarke