Absent Presence

‘O absent presence, Stella is not here’

The fifth and final instalment of the Revenants collection draws inspiration from the Elizabethan poet Sir Philip Sidney. In his Sonnet sequence ‘Astrophel and Stella’ Sidney develops and captures the essence of a haunting… the presence of one that is always felt but never seen.

‘Now I, wit-beaten long by hardest fate,

So dull am, that I cannot look into

The ground of this fierce love and lovely hate,

Then some good body tell me how I do,

Whose presence absence, absent presence is;

Blesst in my curse, and cursed in my bliss.’