Couples

First published on Valentine's Day 2013, Couples is a blackly comic sequence of poems that explore the nature of co-dependency - of two people who want to be together, but at the same time cannot help but push each other away. Now, the seven-year itch has brought Michael Stewart back to this subject for a new edition; revisiting and rethinking the original poems, and adding a dozen more.



The layout of the book is itself a commentary on the phenomenon - the poems are placed in their own 'couples', pairs that face each other across the page. Sometimes they exchange a glance, sometimes they stand side-by-side, staring out into the abyss; only when the book is closed, and they are in darkness, do they truly come together.