'Here in deep earth the black
Blossom of mourning still sifting within me

I remembered that emerald was my birthstone...'

Prizewinning poet Ruth Padel's searching and tender-hearted new collection is an elegy for her mother, at her passing at the age of 97.

With resonating honesty, Padel soulfully examines the assemblage of her grief - the memories, belongings, photographs or conversations that bring a lost person to life - as well as the patterns they leave beneath on the bedrock of the heart.

With an imagination that turns to, and finds solace in, both the natural world and in travel, Emerald is a tender-hearted chronicle of loss, written by a daughter for her mother, but also a reminder of renewal amid ruins: of rediscovering all that is precious in what is left behind.