Rae Diamond’s “floating bones”

I collaborated as designer, publication consultant and contributing editor on this hybrid poetry, art, and essay collection from First Matter Press. floating bones: a dialogue of belonging from Rae Diamond dives into the traumas of homelessness, heartbreak, and loneliness through the creative processes of writing and drawing, meditation, and observing the natural world. The result is an elixir of healing and reconnection. Cover art by Portland collage artist Lara Rouse.

floating bones

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Written by Rae Diamond
Paperback | 92 pages | September 2023
Published by First Matter Press

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FROM THE BACK COVER

“Rae Diamond's collection shows how reality, even belonging, is 'poised for adaptation.' With exquisite form that turns language into sleight of hand, this genre-defying work shook all the language in my body until I was a collection of bones rattling in a jar and reminded me that home is nowhere and everywhere."
—Corinne Manning, author of We Had No Rules

“floating bones is a migratory almanac, a drifting and lyrical meditation on home and belonging. Built with poems of ineffable sonic awareness and tender, hand-drawn sketches, floating bones follows a narrator who has left one home for another, just to find that the new home is unlivable. floating bones is the sacred book by your bedside that you turn to before you sleep. In a time of housing crisis, environmental displacement and global uncertainty, Rae Diamond is a profound guide through the unknown future."
—Ever Jones, author of the transliberatory lyric nightsong

“Skillfully constructed poems abound with images that reference nature and mortality and musical language that compels: 'still outside in/twilight hush in/spiritshattter in/windstir in/awe a drifting/pool reflecting/the world back/to itself'. This book does, in fact, include a skeleton full of gorgeous and mysterious illustrations of found animal bones, deer hooves and antlers, and human teeth with wings. Diamond, an interdisciplinary artist, brings their practice in the visual arts, music, and performance to the work which creates a mesmeric experience for the reader."
—Maw Shein Win, Storage Unit for the Spirit House

“Here Rae (the healer behind the text of the wonderful Cantigee Oracle) frames space where paradox softens, outsung by a note that gathers all sounds into itself and rings out repair. The words do not struggle to replace the other in her diction; she works throughout with sous rature and grayed-out print. These and other names, notions, goads clash and chime, abide as in acoustic space . . . All bones are ear bones? Bone-deep, listen to Rae Diamond."
—Erik Ehn, American Playwright