Winner of the 2023 Aryamati Collection Prize

‘There’s something about being alive / that makes us cry out for help.’ Through visceral and vulnerable poetry, Ricky Ray meditates on the pain and powerlessness that comes with an awareness of our mortality. Finding joy through connecting with the natural world, Ricky navigates his ache of living. Allowing us to accompany him and his beloved service dog, Addie, through the scenic woodlands of Kansas, Illinois and Connecticut, the lines between humans, animals and nature blur. As he moves between forms both physical and elemental, we read of an existence which strives to be not ‘upon / but as one’ with the Earth. At the heart of this collection, which yearns for connections that have been lived, loved and lost, is the enduring comfort of life with an old brown dog.