<i>Grief is personal and unpredictable; no two people experience it the same way, and yet, each person that comes out the other side is transformed by their experience of loss and redemption.<br><br></i>In a sequence of five feverish elegies, Sandra Ridley's <i>Silvija</i> combines narrative lyric and experimental verse styles to manifest dark themes related to love and loss: the traumas of psychological suffering (isolation and confinement), physical abuse (by parent and partner), terminal illness (brain tumour and heart attack), revelation, resolution, and healing. Pulsing with the award-winning writer's signature blend of fervour and sangfroid, the serial poems in <i>Silvija</i> accrue into a book-length testament to a grief both personal and human, leaving readers with the redemptive grace that comes from poetry's ability to wrestle chaos into meaning.<br><br>Because of its overarching themes and serial form, <i>Silvija</i> is best read cover-to-cover, analogous to a work of fiction, rather than a book of individual or occasional poems. In this way, and in dealing with timeless subjects of human significance, this book-length 'requiem for loss' bears comparisons to Anne Carson's <i>Nox</i> and Daphne Marlatt's <i>The Given</i>, and will resonate for the many people who have dealt with traumas of physical and mental illness, who have survived physical and/or emotional abuse, and who search for beauty after catastrophe.