The Long Before
‘Silence purifies. Listening purifies.
Listen. Lean forward. Write it down.
The unmasking.’
This second instalment of the Correspondences Series, entitled ‘The Long Before’, continues the poet’s chthonic descent and return through acts of reclusion and immersion within wilderness environments, where spiritual and physical submission to elemental forces can precipitate a recovery from the injurious nature of human experience.
‘The Long Before’ dwells on time spent in Ontario, Canada, vividly conjuring encounters with the vibrant other-than-human life of its fields, woods and rivers. As Tim Liardet notes, the poem is ‘full of longing, anger and memory, moving from acute observations of the natural world to an equally intense and reflective interiority’. Over the course of its pages, the snake is seen as both predator and guide, the subject of both fear and awe, its ‘avidly seeking’ form a hermetic key to uncovering truths from ‘anterior lives’.
‘The Long Before’ was published on Beltane to honour the return of the light in a Standard Edition of 34, and a Special Edition of 14. The Special Edition elaborated on some of the themes of the poem - including a fold-out disclosure enumerating the snake species found in Ontario, and four beautiful prints of Ontario snakes derived from John Edwards Holbrook’s North American Herpetology (1836-40). It also includes a signed artwork printed on Acquarello paper, along with a unique poem card.