Erebus, the dark and shadowy outer realm of the Underworld in Greek mythology, becomes a place of transition and becoming in Julia McCarthy’s Return from Erebus. The poems articulate this darkness with such keen and evocative vision and language that it appears to be made of light; they explore the richness of being, the ephemeral nature of our experience, and its inherent grief, where Ôjays smash like blue china/flung into the trees/and fly away mending themselves’ and you Ôhear rain and the river/the sound of water walking on itself again.’