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