Snowlines is a collection based on Rebecca’s experience of finding her family’s roots in the Ligurian Alps and where her father was a partisan in WW2.
The poems come from reflections while exploring the valley and beyond.
Rebecca found the village where her Italian family had come from by chance (after research had failed) and subsequently learned much about the history of the area and its wildlife. However, the more she learned the more she realised that history is unknowable and depends on interpretation and point of view.
In our shifting climate, Snowlines also documents the land and its creatures, weaving these strands to show the vulnerability of the Maritime Alps.
La Valle Argentina
You know they are up there
where the stars stop:
mountain-shapes: blacker
forms in the darkness
where constellations pass
but can’t shine through.
These are closer to you
than stars.
They have their own inner movements –
a smaller, more detailed
embroidery of mouse, adder,
beetle, innards, owls,
defecations.
Stars never bother
with things like that
but mountains have to.