Description

Erin Lierl

A Child of Many Waters

ISBN: 978-1-944884-80-2 (pbk.)

(June, 2020)

Ebook available in Epub and MOBI formats.

Most of this remarkable book was originally type-written on small pieces of paper as the author, working as a poet in the streets of New Orleans and other cities, observed the scenes around her as well as her inner world. These prose transcripts of time and place, written around and between poems, reflect a poetic sensitivity to the visual and sonic values of words and phrases while exploring language as a tool of pilgrimage and spiritual engagement. Embodying elements of poetry, fiction, and memoir, the book also embraces the realm of collaborative performance art: the sound of clacking keys and spectacle of the typewriter allow the public square to become aware of itself appearing on the page. As the text’s creation is performed for the world, the world also performs in the mirror of the text.

A Child of Many Waters is a beautiful and revelatory book, a work suffused with deep love and compassion for real people, for living communities, and for the sacred ground on which we walk, the Earth. It focuses intently, though often subtly, on the ultimate questions of meaning and valuing. It grapples on every page with the problem of overcoming delusion, and with the quest to be truly for, and very much with, this world.

—John Clark