Evie Shockley’s work, like all great poetry, is indefatigably experimental, playing with various registers and the sonic possibilities of English – not just one kind of English but many kinds, spoken by various people with different histories and sensitivities, exposing the flexibility of this language in ways that make her work notoriously difficult to translate.

The poem “in this light” takes on three impressionistic paintings (identified just below it). As all ekphrastic work tends to do, the poem provokes questions concerning the relationship between the senses (in this case, of sight and sound),