Vessel: The Shape of Absent Bodies by Dani Netherclift

I’ve been drawn to works lately that are trying to sort something out: turning an event over and over again, trying to make sense of what happened. Trying to understand what went on, and looking at how the event rippled across the rest of (someone’s) life following it. Perhaps it’s because of my own preoccupation with events which have affected me deeply in the past and how to manage them, but whatever the reason, I was very intrigued by Vessel, Dani Netherclift’s work on the drowning deaths of her father and brother. Witness to the drowning, Netherclift explores this defining afternoon of her life through essays, poems, newspaper clipping, local history, and the memories of others of the same time period. Netherclift turns over every stone in trying to understand what happened to her father and brother, as well as what happened to her on that summer afternoon when they went for a swim.

Witness to the drowning, Netherclift explores this defining afternoon of her life through essays, poems, newspaper clipping, local history, and the memories of others of the same time period. Netherclift turns over every stone in trying to understand what happened to her father and brother, as well as what happened to her on that summer afternoon when they went for a swim.

Framing Netherclift’s words is a series of pictures of the envelopes her great-grandmother received from France and Belgium in WWI – a story of loss, but different loss. However, these envelopes tie all the generations of loss that preceded her together, the family still living in the same house where the envelopes first arrived. Netherclift uses other kinds of grief and loss to make sense of her own throughout the book, which was written many years after the initial event. Time has passed to allow Netherclift to gather the materials included in this book to help her understand the drowning, but also to allow her to understand how deeply and profoundly the deaths of her father and brother affected her.

The bare facts of the story are sketched out: Netherclift, her father, and brother went swimming at a location which was not known to her, but her father did know it. They never came back out of the water, while she never went in. Through multiple essays and poems, Netherclift pulls out different details of the day: the official story, her memory, what she wrote in her journal, what others remember. Later, she studies their deaths through the lens of other losses in her life, and through the lens of works that recall something of that particular day. And perhaps most poignantly, Netherclift keeps coming back to the reality that after her father and brother jumped into the water, she never saw them again, and was discouraged from seeing their bodies. Vessel is, above all, a story looking for closure, and trying to get there from multiple angles.

Time has passed to allow Netherclift to gather the materials included in this book to help her understand the drowning, but also to allow her to understand how deeply and profoundly the deaths of her father and brother affected her.

Netherclift’s writing is powerful in this slim volume, presenting grief in all of its messy, confusing glory. A universal experience for us, but also one that’s terribly isolating. I needed to take a moment after finishing this to really sit with the pain in it, but I’m glad for the whole experience. For anyone looking to reflect on grief and loss, this one is for you.

Dani Netherclift is a poet and essayist living and writing on unceded Taungurung Country in Australia. Dani has a PhD in Creative Writing with a specialization in the elegiac lyric essay. Her shorter essays and poems have been widely published in Australia in literary journals and anthologies. She has won or been otherwise commended in multiple writing competitions. Visit her online at dani.netherclift.com.au.

Publisher: Assembly Press (January 13, 2026)
Paperback 8.5″ x 5.5″ | 184 pages
ISBN: 9781998336258

Alison Manley

Website

Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.