I had to keep an eye on things. I had to remember for two. The old idea of “beauty” no longer served—neither the question, nor the answer. My thoughts were blips and scrolls and departures. The task was to catch them just as they came up to the surface. Unexpectedness, chaos, pressure and breaks. Everything seemed to tilt, to barely maintain itself. In spite of all effort. I thought, why not write that way? While the beautiful, seamless poem stopped being relevant to my own way of working, the open field of the page became more and more compelling. That mark of a seismograph across an empty score.

Kathleen Fraser, “To book as in to foal. To son.” from THE GRAND PERMISSION | NEW WRITING ON POETICS AND MOTHERHOOD