In 2006 Tim Liardet's brother died at a young age in mysterious circumstances. The Storm House is a response to a mystery it knows can never be solved, a book-length elegy that is a grief-fugue and an exploration of the violent, loving, complex psychodrama of family. The two parts of the book form a powerful narrative of sorrow and anger, the events recollected in the first part retold, fragmented and illuminated by the sonnets of the second. Out of uncertainty, trauma and silence, the poet creates powerful poetry that finds catharsis in 'the spring and leap / of energy' of the creative life owed to the dead.