In “Witness,” you allude to the martyr St. Priscilla. Other poems take up women mystics like Hilma af Klint and the other members of De Fem, who practiced mysticism. The tree of knowledge—Yggdrasil in Norse mythology—is also frequently regarded as a feminine figure. For you, how are mysticism or spirituality, gender, and witness connected?
What a wonderful question. In much of this collection, I am thinking about the historical role of women in the church, art, spirituality, and the world at large. In “Witness,” I refer to Santa Priscilla’s catacombs and compare the shape of the orants (the praying figures) in the frescos to the shimmying of the leaves on birch trees. What isn’t exactly mentioned in the poem, but you perhaps intuitively honed in on, is those particular catacombs are filled with images of women participating in various religious activities that are normally performed by men.