Daphne Marlatt

This book was written in a series of layers, almost archeological the urge to dig deeper in, to the hidden [not yet verbalized] series of connections that underlay, like root systems, like bone-seeds, the obvious data of our trip. Writing/traveling a series of intersections, two kinds of speech as my Canadian tongue found its way around the remnants of my British one. Traveling as a gathering of bones [to bring back to life, joined, in the body of the text]. My journal was full of jottings as well as narrative paragraphs and these informed the journal entries in the book. First came the poems which started as soon as I got home, dense clusters of intersections. Then came the prose entries, as narrative connecting lines. Text as map, another kind of body--not "napkin, sheet", shroud, not a mere imprint of experience long gone, but speech speaking what is to be said.