Missing the eclipse

Joan Hewitt’s award winning poetry is subtle, deft, but always hits the spot. There is a sense here of the gaps in life, of words that frame the absences, the colouring around all that is missing, beautifully summed up in the title poem, but pervading the collection as it moves from Tyneside to Liverpool to Osterholz-Scharmbeck; from small domestic or intimate moments to understated, but none the less powerful, political observations. The language is sharp, layered with humour and intelligence.