Absence, the third title in CHEERIO' s acclaimed poetry series, is a book about nothing. Or nothings: losses, vacua, gaps.

From the desolation at the heat-death of the universe to the impassable distance between two people talking, and from the trust exercise of walking in darkness to experiments on the vacuum, Absence searches for what' s missing and what we never had.

Starting with the problem of how to represent that that isn' t there, and ending with the end of love, Absence takes in the ache for a vanished god, the permanently delayed doomsday of millenarian cults, and the overflowing life inside our seemingly empty buckets and stomachs.

Ali Lewis' s poems mirror, undermine, reframe and rephrase each other in a voice that feels as precise and scientific as is it playful and warm. Absence is both intricate and ambitious, comic and tragic.

It is a book of restless curiosity and revelation.

'Deft, ingenious, funny and metaphysically gymnastic. What an absolute gift it is.' - Abigail Parry

' I love this. Ali Lewis' s poems have an unparaphrasable quality, as if they' re not read but inhaled, like a clear vapour which leaves you giddy, tranquil and troubled all at once. Read it, you' ll see what I mean.' - Caroline Bird