DownpourRuth Valentine has worked as an undertaker and as a celebrant at secular funerals. In this new collection she draws on her experiences to compose an extended meditation on dying and death, its emotional grammar and its painful but necessary rituals. Bleak and brave, serious and sad, Downpour is an unflinching study of the physical realities of dying. Bodies are prepared for burial, coffin lids are closed, and scattered ashes sail downriver. Valentine

inviting Prince Harry to officially declare open ‘his new gate’

from reality to fantasy

Several of the poems have previously appeared in various publications

Charles Lauder

where he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol: an anguished plea for prison reform

where he also serves as Director of both the Irish Studies and Summer in Ireland programs and runs the LMU Irish Cultural Festival

irony and intelligence

‘After 209’

He is widely published and

and an anthology of Tamil resistance poems

I promised him I wouldn't cry

explore multiple world-endings and their possible outcomes