From the Author: These two splinters come from a manuscript in progress, titled The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in the Ear, Thriving Slumber which explores how trees might delimit the human. The italicised line is borrowed from an Old Norse text, the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson.
Jay Gao is a poet from Edinburgh, Scotland, living in New York. His poetry collection Imperium (Carcanet, 2022) is a winner of the 2023 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. He is also the author of three poetry chapbooks. He has received support from Bread Loaf, Tin House, Civitella Ranieri, Community of Writers, and he received his MFA from Brown University. He is a reader for Poetry magazine. Currently, he is also a PhD student in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
