Night Contradicts the Day is a sequence of very personal poems by acclaimed poet Stephen Romer, shaped by the experience of loving someone close whose inner world has become increasingly difficult to reach.
The poems here are a space of refuge, the only place left to go being language, being the argument with the self. They record the attempt over many years, often thwarted, often anguished, to keep communications open with a loved one, the addressee, who inhabits a reality increasingly fortified by its own fierce and isolating illogic. A disjunctive reality, with no continuous foundation, unless it be unconditional love.
‘The sheer scale and intensity of self-estrangement and estrangement techniques required to survive such a devastation are realized and evoked in a way that would seem, prospectively, to be inconceivable. And to have found that tone for such terror and isolation. It is an amazing piece of work.’
— Adam Phillips
‘I very much admire the poem. I admire the refusal of the rhetorical temptations offered by the subject matter; I admire what is in a sense its plainness; I admire the way the poem works without ‘performing’; I admire the truth to feeling and the artistic assurance that enables it. It is harrowing and fascinating, and I keep returning to it.’
— Sean O’Brien
You can hear Stephen discuss Night in Contradicts the Day in conversation with Sally Bailey on her ‘A Reading Life, A Writing Life’ podcast.
20pp
ISBN: 9781915968173
