Painkiller is the final book in a trilogy of collections that started with The Weather That Kills (1995) followed by Femme du Monde (Tia Chucha 1996). Of these three collections the poems in Painkiller are the most emotional and intimate and yet they are also the most universal as they look at the consequences of love found and lost; passions unleashed; terror from human conduct and the awesome power of natural disaster.