Nunatak is the Inuit word for 'lonely mountain,' an isolated mountain peak that protrudes through the ice. The poem is from a sequence that explores Arctic landscapes and the impact of human intrusion. By describing the nunatak through a series of definitions, I hoped to draw in the reader to consider its relationship with the stark and brutal environment, and to convey a feeling of power and menace. Some motifs are carried through from other poems in the sequence: the egg, the fossilised bones, tracks.
"'Middle distance' is a term from pictorial representation to single out what occupies—or exists inside—the space between the composition’s foreground and background. In this final, superb collection, 'middle distance' becomes that state between life and death. And crucially it is a state in which the forces of memory and imagination continue to hold immense creative power."
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"This element of Kurdish delights me: to crack a word open and peer inside it, to find a world within a word, a world where the abstract is embodied. The Kurdish language calls the body into every conversation, fashioning idea from body. There is no hiding the body, not even to protect it."
