Poetry lights a path through the shadowlands of grief 

‘Poems For When You Can’t Find The Words’ is a collection of verses that can offer a path through and some light amidst the darkness of grief, writes Clodagh Finn

Poems for When You Can't Find the Words: one for those who have loved and lost.

There are no words to comfort someone who has suffered a double bereavement. The uncomfortable truth of that is laid bare by Jean Callanan, chair of the Irish Hospice Foundation, who describes how everyone struggled to find words when she and her family found themselves facing such incalculable loss.

“‘No words’ was like a mantra,” she says. “Everyone struggled with words, including me and my family, the bereaved. Poets had words though and we reached out to them in our pain and confusion.” The words of poet Christina Rossetti at one funeral and WB Yeats at the other offered not only solace but articulated “these huge, bewildering experiences that stretch the limits of human understanding”.