Shadow Blight considers the pain and isolation of pregnancy loss through the lens of classical myth. Drawing on the stories of Niobe–whose monumental suffering at the loss of her children literally turned her to stone–and others, this collection explores the experience of being swept away by grief and silenced by the world. Skirting the tropes (“o how beautiful / the poets make our catastrophes”), MacAskill interweaves the ancient with the contemporary in a way that opens possibilities and offers a new language for those “shut up in stillness.”

Annick MacAskill is the author of a chapbook entitled Brotherly Love: Poems of Sappho and Charaxos (2016). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Grain, Prism International, Versal, Room Magazine, The Fiddlehead, and Arc. She has been selected as a finalist for the CBC Canada Writes Poetry Prize, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. Originally from Ontario, she currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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