Random Experiments in Bioluminescence is a remarkable collection of luminous poems for cherishing cultures, languages, and the Earth โ From poet and urbanist Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo.
โListen with your natural body,โ writes Shimshon-Santo. โIn the beginning, there was song.โ This collection tracks a womanโs search for language and belonging. Choral, cryptographic, and exhilarating, Shimshon-Santo provides glimpses into a poetics of planetary livability.
The collection opens with a โgenealogy of the momentโ in โx or x prime clock time.โ Trees and vines โtangle their hair togetherโ to escape over brick walls. A piano decomposes into forest mulch. Seaweed fronds curl around pilings. Gravity โplants humans in the ground like oaksโ while black birds murmurate skyward. Echolocate in the galaxy through poems, and become a โrapture gawker of infinity consciousness.โ
Mother tongues join a line dance of translations with family and friends. A trilingual villanelle for รฒrรฌแนฃร cohabitates with talmudic inspired piyyut. Poems morph into flow charts, pictograms, haikus, and chants โ scattered between photographs of habitats.
Her verse has kinesthetic momentum on the pageโflowing from right to left or left to right, ascending or descending, to weave conversations between languages. The outcome of Random Experiments in Bioluminescence is a homecoming to the body and the planet; respect for multiple languages and awe for life in our pluriverse.