'The city of Santa Fe sits 2200 metres above sea level, my new friend – an older, established writer who has lived here for decades – tells me as we drive along the highway, the Rio Grande a flashing blue knife on one side, ragged sloping bush on the other. I’ve been living here for a month as part of an artist residency, so this fact doesn’t come as a surprise. “Once a Palestinian poet was meant to do a reading here, but on landing, had to be immediately flown away, he was so sick.”' (Introduction)