Map of the Territory

Nigel Forde is fascinated by things in the process of change: music, the momentary epiphany, the precarious balance of twilight rather than night or day. The poems, written over a period of years, meditate on memory and landscape: in the unremarkable and evanescent lives can find their greatest clarity. Two central sequences, 'A Map of the Territory' and 'Touchstones', express ways of remaking memories in language. 'Touchstones', a Hungarian sonnet sequence, explores the creative possibilities of strict poetic forms. 'A Map of the Territory' attempts both truth to events and to what distance has made of them. The collection maps a landscape and the mind that it has shaped.