dumbfoundry

I asked Dunmore about "With short, harsh breaths", which shares these preoccupations:

You keep her letters in a box
and deal them out like patience
to lie on your breakfast table

stamps obsolete, envelope eagerly torn
by the man who once lived in your skin.

It's a tender, empathic piece of writing, and I wondered if the "you" in the poem was based on somebody specific. Dunmore sidestepped that question, suggesting a (perfectly reasonable) reluctance to expose the personal history behind her writing.

"That poem is about loss. Photographs and letters try to give you memory. And you can open a letter that somebody wrote to you 50, 60 years ago, and it's alive on the page, and yet you can't truly access it. It's a very curious feeling when you're handling documents, whether they're to do with your life or other lives. I think it's eerie."

This entry was posted by Ivy on Wednesday, November 10, 2004 at 11:34 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.