Position & Relation

This lovely book of poems, writ­ten in Wood­stock, NY, car­ries inspi­ra­tion from var­i­ous places. The book, pref­aced by “12 Poems That Were Never Writ­ten,” is divided into three sec­tions, “Nat­ural Megaron,” “Prepo­si­tion Poems,” and “Lung Poems,” cor­re­spond­ing to three dis­tinc­tive meth­ods Rad­far used to write her way into time and space: set­tling down with her jour­nal on a hilly over­look after a thirty minute walk; remov­ing prepo­si­tions while still man­ag­ing to talk about her rela­tion to space; writ­ing at a fixed time in the mid­dle of the night. In going as far as she can in each of these dis­parate direc­tions, she sum­mons with a sur­pris­ing degree of cer­ti­tude a sense of how this spe­cific place once affected her writ­ing and her life.

Paper­back with vel­lum dust jacket.

Advance Praise for Posi­tion & Rela­tion:

“In an ongo­ing fas­ci­na­tion that unfolds from the rhythms of Breathe (2004), India Rad­far explores in Posi­tion & Rela­tion the expanses of the in-between: the per­plex­ing space between the poem and the writ­ing of the poem, the unpre­dictable land­scapes between the I and the you, the rela­tional void between words, and the recur­ring eli­sions of wake­ful­ness. It is a stun­ning inquiry into what has “no expla­na­tion / slid­ing like a cloud between.” — Lila Zemborain

“These are med­i­ta­tive and grace­ful poems, ones that explore both the where of posi­tion and the next to of rela­tion. They are full of the hopes that define both absence and adja­cency. ” — Juliana Spahr

“These poems are del­i­cate cloaks of human lan­guage, so fresh and open the breeze blows right through.” — Eleni Sikelianos