vox sana in mundo insano

This poem below has some special significance for me. In 1997, I moved to France for a year and ended up in Montbrison, a charming little provincial town in the Loire department not too far from Saint Etienne. During my time there, I spent a few months with a lovely family called the Oliviers. I remember them taking me to the Richard de Bas Paper Mill over in the small hamlet of Ambert one day (it must have been around February 1998). This historic little museum still produces paper by hand using artisanal methods which have scarcely changed since the 14th century. At the end of the tour, I ended up in the museum shop where I could purchase gifts and souvenirs, among which were examples of printed texts, be it prose or poetry, on speciality paper that had been hand crafted with flowers pressed into the actual pulp. Blaise Olivier kindly offered to buy me something as a momento of my visit, so I picked an item of poetry which I thought was rather prepossessing at the time. WHen I return...

Emma is the eldest of my sisters, and was born in December 1960. I have known of her existence for a while, but it was only in the spring of 2020 that I finally got to know a bit more about her through my sister Susan, and decided to send her a letter to see if she would respond. Here is the letter I wrote to her back in May: Dear Emma, I hope you don’t mind me addressing you by your first name even though I don’t really know you at all. I give myself that liberty only because we are related through our birth mother,    Christine Marie Medenhall I am your half brother, Peter. I was born in 1977 if you remember? I was too young to remember you, and I know you were a great deal older than me. But I’ve known about your existence for a long time because you were mentioned in my adoption statement as my elder sister, Caroline I address you as Emma though, because that is the name you have chosen to be known by, and I respect that. I just wanted to write to you and say how happy...