Salt and Ashes

Out of dried tears and burnt matter comes fertile ground, new nourishment. A woman traveller walks up and down a mountain, back and forth through a quarter of Grenoble over the course of many months, experiencing anticipatory grief and later bereavement over the loss of a spouse. With little to anchor her, claim her, as she walks poems begin to seek her out. Poems of dislocation, cultural migration, rage, healing and transformation spring forth and set root – poems that transform the vocabulary of science, its language and concepts, into poems that encounter the natural world with an intensity and clarity that direct us to the core of our humanity and the tender parts of our being.

These poems are crafted out of the language of dreams, mythologies, and inventions. Laced with subtle humour, irony and surprising turns, they return us to the place of origin seen anew. Like the egg and bitter herbs dipped in salt at the Seder Table, they remind us that beyond pain and grief, the only peace we have is the one we construct for ourselves.

Out of dried tears and burnt matter comes fertile ground, new nourishment. A woman traveller walks up and down a mountain, back and forth through a quarter of Grenoble over the course of many months, experiencing anticipatory grief and later bereavement over the loss of a spouse. With little to anchor her, claim her, as she walks poems begin to seek her out. Poems of dislocation, cultural migration, rage, healing and transformation spring forth and set root – poems that transform the vocabulary of science, its language and concepts, into poems that encounter the natural world with an intensity and clarity that direct us to the core of our humanity and the tender parts of our being.

These poems are crafted out of the language of dreams, mythologies, and inventions. Laced with subtle humour, irony and surprising turns, they return us to the place of origin seen anew. Like the egg and bitter herbs dipped in salt at the Seder Table, they remind us that beyond pain and grief, the only peace we have is the one we construct for ourselves.