Poetry. Richard Caddel began WRITING IN THE DARK after he was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1999; he regarded the series as ongoing, to be "finished" only by his death, which came in April 2003. The poems are an extended meditation on the many connotations of darkness and were originally drafted literally "in the dark," using a hand-held Psion with a backlit screen, in England and Japan. The book is a companion volume to his selected poems, MAGPIE WORDS, published in 2002 and also available from SPD. 'Caddel continually finds the right way to say what he needs to say. Each form serves its occasion. Each occasion matters to Caddel, and subsequently to us" --Martin Corless-Smith.