Sarah Riggs is a writer, filmmaker, translator and artist. She is the author of seven books of poetry in English: Waterwork (Chax, 2007), Chain of Minuscule Decisions in the Form of a Feeling (Reality Street, 2007), 60 Textos (Ugly Duckling, 2010), Autobiography of Envelopes (Burning Deck, 2012), Pomme & Granite (1913 Press, 2015) which won a 1913 poetry prize, Eavesdrop (Chax, 2020) and The Nerve Epistle, which is forthcoming this Fall 2021 with Roof Books. Selections from Waterwork and Chax have come out as Murmurations (éditions Apic, 2021) in the original and with French translations by Marie Borel and Jérémy Robert. Riggs has translated six poetry books from French including the prizewinning TIME by Etel Adnan (Nightboat Books, 2019). Her film productions have shown at the Berlin Film Festival, the Jeu de Paume, the Tate Modern, Anthology Film Archive and other venues. Her drawings and paintings have shown at galleries internationally, and often are in conversation with her writing. She is a podcaster with "Invitation to the Species" and runs a translation seminar and intercultural art projects with Tamaas, which means "contact" in Arabic. More about Sarah and her work can be found on her website, https://sarahriggs.org.
"Unbound Sheets"
(writing through Emily Dickinson, 1865/2021)
Sheet 42
I am afraid to own a Body—
(I woke with fear stuck in my mouth)
I am afraid to own a Soul—
(this return of fear, your enemy within
yourself)
Profound—precarious Property—
(the heft of the self within the body)
Possession, not optional
(Is it a choice then, to possess or
be possessed)
There she was pacing, there were after her
(S/he) growing tumourly
Nor Snow—it was too small
(the survivor’s guilt
a metallic part you have to carry
or walk through)
(I am afraid to own a body)
Paris my time there at the rue
Pavée began with her telling
me of this loss a still birth
& how they wanted to bury the
fetus—it was very heavy at
the time and she said she could
have opted not to tell me
Profound—precarious property
surviving the Civil War in
Amherst, the pandemic in
Brooklyn—a touch, a flavor,
in the midst of things
Carrying the weight, setting it down
Nor Snow—it was too small—
the body of the guilt
taking it on
Myself can read the Telegrams
The news the news
Lives lives
global loss the tears
the lynching
the cancer
the pollution
Tis news as null as nothing
"Crisis is a Hair"
Let in so little (she)
an aptitude for Bird
Bleeding (she) every month
Is easy possibly
Just a regular sort of thing
(she) the Habit of a Foreign Sky
Held in that rocking
an Elephant’s calm eyes
(she) the news is in our lungs
Experiment to Me
(She) washing hair to hair
A Territory for Ghosts
You say (she) Pioneer, settlers
Touches My Forehead
now and then
1865 battles in the soul (she) Civil
And a Suspicion, like a Finger
(she) not splitting hairs
I am looking oppositely for the site
Forty-Eighth unbound sheet
(she) bound unbound
The news is null.
"The Instant Holding in its Claw"
I’ve dropped my Brain
She says (she)
My Soul is numb—
What can it be to feel
Whole heart Done perfecter
the times, in stone—
Stirring the moments—
Instincts for Dance
(She) writes or is it clasps
An Aptitude for Bird—
The robin is her newspaper
The Robin is the One
(she) any laughter in
those syllables?
Hurried—few—
express Reports
(She) the moment, interrupts with
Mourning
"While it and I lap One Air"
(She) This Chasm, sweet
upon my life
The wilderness in hunger
I mention it to you,
(She) abruptly enters my mind
—the Hinge of Day
knocking, the waking settlers
The Habit of a Foreign Sky
Ghosts pivot on a door knob
We—difficult acquire
Who is there (she) among them
A Sense that smote and stirred
the unceded territory (she) is there
for the Ghosts, formerly
(they) Nipmuck, Pocumtuc, Massachusett
Away from Home are some and I
(She) in precarity of mind
An Emigrant to be
Writing cues to attention
In a metropolis of homes
(She) this plurality flung toward possibility
*quotes taken with gratitude from Cristanne Miller’s
Emily Dickinson’s Poems, As She Preserved Them
(Harvard University Press, 2016)
