SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN by Rachel Nolan
My heart shatters / with each possibility, adding to the roadside debris / something less reflective than fiberglass / but just as sharp.
While the environmental consequences of our automobile dependency are rightly lamented, car culture's everyday dangers have become so commonplace as to be all but ignored. Collisions are nothing more than obstructions of traffic, drivers craning their necks to take in a scene forgotten just as quickly as they speed away. Tragedies involving pedestrians may be fodder for the nightly news, but little is done to prevent their occurrence. Thousands perish in such catastrophes every year, leaving loved ones to process their sorrow as they likely remain reliant upon a vehicle of their own.
"In SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN, we accompany Rachel Nolan on their painstaking, authentic, artful investigation of grief. After the hit-and-run car accident that kills their dear friend, they take the reader on a journey of introspective mourning, a honing-in on small details, going over them again and again, demanding answers—yes—but the agonizing questions, in this case, make this book so viscerally, painfully human. For who among us has not felt as though an accident that breaks our hearts, takes our beloved from us, can be anything other than a grand conspiracy. In response to unbearable loss, they create an alternate universe in which the only things red or exploding are the flowers at your bedside, in which you are both not of this world and walking through the door. SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN is a book for anyone who has ever lost someone suddenly, to circumstances beyond their control. It is for anyone who wishes their imagination and their grief could raise the dead."
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of NIGHT SWIM
For every copy sold, Another New Calligraphy will donate $1 to WalkMassachusetts, a nonprofit making walking safer and easier to encourage better health, a cleaner environment, and vibrant communities.
Read an excerpt previously published in Impossible Task.
48 pages, handmade and numbered • 2022
My heart shatters / with each possibility, adding to the roadside debris / something less reflective than fiberglass / but just as sharp.
While the environmental consequences of our automobile dependency are rightly lamented, car culture's everyday dangers have become so commonplace as to be all but ignored. Collisions are nothing more than obstructions of traffic, drivers craning their necks to take in a scene forgotten just as quickly as they speed away. Tragedies involving pedestrians may be fodder for the nightly news, but little is done to prevent their occurrence. Thousands perish in such catastrophes every year, leaving loved ones to process their sorrow as they likely remain reliant upon a vehicle of their own.
"In SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN, we accompany Rachel Nolan on their painstaking, authentic, artful investigation of grief. After the hit-and-run car accident that kills their dear friend, they take the reader on a journey of introspective mourning, a honing-in on small details, going over them again and again, demanding answers—yes—but the agonizing questions, in this case, make this book so viscerally, painfully human. For who among us has not felt as though an accident that breaks our hearts, takes our beloved from us, can be anything other than a grand conspiracy. In response to unbearable loss, they create an alternate universe in which the only things red or exploding are the flowers at your bedside, in which you are both not of this world and walking through the door. SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN is a book for anyone who has ever lost someone suddenly, to circumstances beyond their control. It is for anyone who wishes their imagination and their grief could raise the dead."
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of NIGHT SWIM
For every copy sold, Another New Calligraphy will donate $1 to WalkMassachusetts, a nonprofit making walking safer and easier to encourage better health, a cleaner environment, and vibrant communities.
Read an excerpt previously published in Impossible Task.
48 pages, handmade and numbered • 2022
My heart shatters / with each possibility, adding to the roadside debris / something less reflective than fiberglass / but just as sharp.
While the environmental consequences of our automobile dependency are rightly lamented, car culture's everyday dangers have become so commonplace as to be all but ignored. Collisions are nothing more than obstructions of traffic, drivers craning their necks to take in a scene forgotten just as quickly as they speed away. Tragedies involving pedestrians may be fodder for the nightly news, but little is done to prevent their occurrence. Thousands perish in such catastrophes every year, leaving loved ones to process their sorrow as they likely remain reliant upon a vehicle of their own.
"In SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN, we accompany Rachel Nolan on their painstaking, authentic, artful investigation of grief. After the hit-and-run car accident that kills their dear friend, they take the reader on a journey of introspective mourning, a honing-in on small details, going over them again and again, demanding answers—yes—but the agonizing questions, in this case, make this book so viscerally, painfully human. For who among us has not felt as though an accident that breaks our hearts, takes our beloved from us, can be anything other than a grand conspiracy. In response to unbearable loss, they create an alternate universe in which the only things red or exploding are the flowers at your bedside, in which you are both not of this world and walking through the door. SHOVE THE LIGHT BACK IN is a book for anyone who has ever lost someone suddenly, to circumstances beyond their control. It is for anyone who wishes their imagination and their grief could raise the dead."
—Joan Kwon Glass, author of NIGHT SWIM
For every copy sold, Another New Calligraphy will donate $1 to WalkMassachusetts, a nonprofit making walking safer and easier to encourage better health, a cleaner environment, and vibrant communities.
Read an excerpt previously published in Impossible Task.
48 pages, handmade and numbered • 2022
Rachel Nolan holds a BA from Hampshire College and is currently a freelance poetry editor living in Boston, Massachusetts. Rachel’s work has recently appeared in HOOT Review, Second Chance Lit, and GLITCHWORDS, among others, and was a finalist for Heavy Feather Review's Zachary Doss Friends in Letters Memorial Fellowship in 2020. You can find Rachel managing Millennial Pulp literary magazine or on Twitter @bigpoetrynerd.