To Feed the Stone

Forty-four short pieces between prose and poetry, most named after a household object: a comb, a teaspoon, shoes, tights, a pincushion, buttons. Through them a child watches a family: a great-grandmother lost in dementia who waits in the garden, suitcase in hand and slippers on, beside imagined rails for a train; a grandmother; a mother; a father who sometimes seems to vanish and leave his story to his things. The child keeps a dead grandfather's comb because he is still inside it, learns that skin is all that divides a body from the world, and one day picks up a stone, treats it as a confidant and tries to feed it. Old age, death and violence press on every page, and objects hold the dead in place.

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About the book

Form

Poetry

Length

53 pages in the original

First published

2015 by Biuro Literackie

Author's age

41 when first published

ISBN

9788365125026 (original)

9781628973723 (Dalkey Archive Press, United States)