Abstract

This collection of poems in free verse is an exploration of all the different meanings of the word "independence". In the description of singular events, people and places and in a deliberate rootedness in concrete things, the poems also try to capture complicated states of being and to illustrate questions relating to various aspects of freedom: how can one be free from the memory of the past, from discontinuity, from loss? What do places represent in our lives? How do we belong or not belong to a place? What is exile? What is home? How are happiness and unhappiness contingent on these attachments? To what degree do fate, chance and environment account for who we are, and to what extent do we create ourselves? Above all, in the unravelling of these questions, these poems reaffirm the awe and astonishment that lie at the heart of our perception of the world