The Law at Night

By Elizabeth Barnett

The Backwaters Prize in Poetry Honorable Mention

The Law at Night is about how the seemingly absolute is actually quite unstable--rules don't hold in the dark; time doesn't only move forward; we can lose anything, even ourselves. Arranged in vignettes, the poems flash on moments across a woman's life--climbing a rope ladder, visiting a museum, getting a baby to sleep--and then go black again. As the darkness undoes the law, it binds together the selves we are. Lucille Clifton, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, and Elizabeth Bishop are key inspirations, polishing the real until we can see the sky in it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 149624804X
• ISBN13: 9781496248046
• Release Date: March 2027
• Publisher: Backwaters Press
• Length: 80 Pages