When artist Carmen Vella Gauci lost her 14-year-old son, Andrew, in tragic circumstances three months ago she and her family were thrown into a dark world of grief they did not know how to navigate. Carmen became emotionally and creatively blocked. “I dried up. I could no longer paint to express myself. All I could see was red and black,” she recalls. But when she started attending therapy together with her family, to process the grief, she discovered a new outlet – words. Carmen, an LSE and art teacher, has now published a book of poetry, titled Verses to My Son: In Search of Solace, to help others through grief. Never one to pen a poem before, words started flowing out of Carmen. “I would think of a concept or a word and one word would follow the other. It was therapy for me,” she says. The result was some 300 poems, in Maltese and English, about her grieving process: some are hopeful and light, others angry and dark. Others are reflective and others tell parts of her story. She talks about her son being the “new angel” in heaven who needs guidance around and jokes at the fact that he was always up to something. She talks about the anger towards gossipers and desire to embrace...