The poems in Ellipses are extractions, explorations, and, finally, moments of alternate life experiences that are so often left to the gaps of historical record.

Ellipses was inspired by a trinity of personal events: the birth of Andrea MacPherson’s daughter and the deaths of both of her grandmothers. After they died, MacPherson came to realize that she did not really know their stories, and would never be able to ask them. In Ellipses she reimagines familiar lore to recreate the lives of these two extraordinary women. This exploration leads to other marginalized voices in history — including Suzanne Valadon and the models who posed for Bellocq — and their stories.

Ellipses reclaims the often obscured realities of motherhood, illness, and the struggles of these women for independence?in verse.