This was one of the first poems I wrote in what would eventually become a book-length series titled "The Engineers" (Saturnalia Books, 2023). I was very early in a pregnancy at the time—in the first few weeks, a fraught phase—and trying to imagine the space inside my body from the fetus' point-of-view. What would it be like to think before thinking? To perceive, but in the dark?
Katy Lederer on "Ectopic" |
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"Reading Dante in Ukraine"
"Dante has no need to defend his art. Poetry matters: he sees it as a primal ancient force and art form, one that's been here long before our individual lifetimes and will stay long after (Vergil, who lived centuries before him, guides him into the present). What we need, Dante's journey shows us, is to defend ourselves with it: a tune to walk to, even in the underworld, as long as one still walks."
via ASYMPTOTE |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Sarah Ghazal Ali on Language as Form
"'Matrilineage [Umbilicus]' sprung from this unsettledness, not halfway into my first pregnancy, when my body ceased to be entirely mine. I came to the page eyes closed, hands outstretched to trace the contours of my thinking. I could not yet trace the face of my child, so I tried instead to touch each thought as it was born." |
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