Three women, each destined to play the role of a poet's wife: Catherine Blake, the wife of William Blake, Nadezhda Mandelstam, wife of Russian poet Osip Mandelstam and the wife of a fictional contemporary Irish poet, who looks back on her marriage during the days after her husband's death as she seeks to fulfil his final wish. Set across continents and centuries and in very different circumstances, these three women confront the contradictions between art and life, contemplate their emotional and physical sacrifices for another's creativity and struggle with infidelities that involve not only the flesh but ultimately poetry itself.
