Departing from an understanding that the self and the image of self are intertwined and inseparable; both constructed and mediated through language – one’s own and others –, the poetic piece All Over: The Stretching of the Skin sets out to explore the spaces in and between language and self.

Using crossings, intersections, and interstices: on the page, in the language, in the self and in the room, the poems aim to cultivate a rhizomatic understanding of the world, the language and the written and performed self. This understanding is founded not on the prevalent dichotomous way of thinking that dictates clear starting and ending points for how we perceive and understand the world, but rather on the creating of a continuous now.

By using spaces and distances as a method in the poetic process, the objective is to craft a pathway through which the geography of the self is allowed to be formulated, leaving room even for the most concealed aspects and deserted territories within. The poetic piece can thus be read as a constructed geography; as a map with multiple entry/exit points depending on the readers needs, and as a transferring of the self in each given, yet extended, period of time. 

Although this produces a less conventionally coherent narrative, the assumption is that this may be a more honest depiction of the self, which in turn may go some way towards mitigating the oppressive fiction of linear development of our own beings and our self-construction.