Cirrus@Austlit

Metals gleam, and so does water. In reflecting and refracting impressions, memory and imagi-nation blur into each other. I often think of Toni Morrison’s writing on the attempts to straighten the Mississippi River, and how the water inevitably returns. Morrison writes:

‘Floods is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remem-bering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, that valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory—what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding”.’

(Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn, Editorial introduction)