Book of Hours

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Breathing new life into the form of the devotional text, Book of Hours is a powerful meditation on the conditions of place, gaze, and being.

This pocket-sized collection of original drawings and poems in English animates visual and textual poetics around the mythology of place. Recalling the richly illustrated devotional texts of early modern Europe, Book of Hours draws widely on sources from Swedish, Italian, German, and Arabic literature as well as music, photographs, architectural blueprints, and geological maps from Europe, Australia, and the Americas.

With the startling clarity of a mathematical theorem and the lyrical familiarity of a dream, Dolp’s poetry provides metaphorical instructions for the delicate work of tracing and orientation. The collection’s visual miniatures are also invested in the project of seeing: objects of meditation are collaged on and against each other, urging the reader to reconsider what is and what is yet to be.

Colored by grief, nostalgia and ecstasy, Book of Hourshonors the circumambulatory paths of our lives, asking:How did we get here? Where are the borders of day and night, gravity and weightlessness, inside and outside? What have we gained and what are we in danger of losing?

CITATION

Dolp, Laura. Book of Hours. New York, NY: Stenen Press, 2021.

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