“This collection began with the watery space where I grew up and extends to the space that holds us all: the ocean. The poems built themselves around family who are always with me, even if gone or far away. They rely on memory, flawed but real, rushing like fast-flowing current. They came into focus in 2025 as our world was pushed off kilter after the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States; the title poem is from a set of ‘Poetry Dispatches’ I wrote for Paula Green’s Poetry Shelf in the months following. ‘Motion sickness’ was the first poem I wrote in that series and the poem that closes the collection, ‘Tomorrow’, was the last.” Michelle Elvy