Anniversary

Christopher Reid's wife, the actress Lucinda Gane, died in October 2005. The poems he wrote about her death were published by Arete Books in a volume titled A Scattering, which went on to be chosen as Costa Book of the Year 2009, the first collection of poems in ten years to be so honoured. Josephine Hart, chair of the Costa judges, described it as 'austere and beautiful and moving' and 'a master work by a man who for sad reasons has met artistically his moment'. Since then, Reid has published collections of verse on other subjects, but as the tenth anniversary of his loss approaches he has returned to elegy in ten poems addressed directly to Lucinda, remembering and celebrating aspects of her personality and their marriage. Anniversary is quiet and intimate in tone, but of considerably wider resonance in what it has to say about these things. It is in every respect a fitting postscript to the volume by which he is best known.