Cirrus@Austlit

'If I had to sum up Carl Walsh’s Tarp Green Light in one word it would be mindful. The work focuses inward, quietly observant, converting memory into the present moment through deep and sustained observation. In many ways the book takes the form of a journey, moving through places and spaces but also time, moving back towards childhood, the discovery of a personal ancestry, and even beyond that into the human relationship and shared DNA with animal life and the natural world: creature, rock and lichen. This is an exploration of deep connections and deep time, the way spaces connect, and the way in which humans inhabit and change those spaces. The book is structured into four sections, each similar in the ways they utilise language, simultaneously condensed and expansive, beginning with the self as innocent youth, rooted in sensuality, and moving through language towards a non-linguistic awareness that is both knowing and yet still rooted in the innocent self.' (Introduction)

'Though she was only fourteen years old, like many other Jews in Eastern Europe’s Pale of Settlement in 1907, Rebecca Lieberman gathered her few belongings and left for the United States. What follows is a unique and poetic story of history, war, mysticism, music, abuse, survival and transcendence against the backdrop of New York City in the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s.

'“A fourteen-year-old girl is launched by pogroms and poverty into the New World, fearful and alone. How can she know that her great-granddaughter would weave her story, through imagination and a careful reading of history, into a poetic gift to her memory, and for many more generations to come?”' (Publication summary)