![Broadside of "Close to Each Other With [a/the] Body," poem by Michael Wasson with art by Amy Meissner.](https://broadsidedpress.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/143-Close-Wasson-Meissner-Broadsided-400x518.jpg)
“Close to Each Other With [a / the] Body” / “paq’qatát cilakátk”
How does translation fit into your creative life?
Michael Wasson: I don’t know if it truly ‘fits’ as much as it has always been a part of my little ‘creative’ life. A hand. Or a shoulder. A jawbone. I never asked how my arm fits to my body. It’s just my arm. But many of our ‘creative’ lives somehow involve language being a conversation between the unsayable and the transformative. I like opening possibilities. So when nimipuutímt blossoms a smidge out from the page, I let it be. Just let it ache and breathe and be alive there in its beautiful little textual and/or sonic breach. For me, maybe that’s how it fits. Like a tiny fracture from a world somewhere inside me. Revealing brief layers to a life I’ve been given. Like the origins of my arm was all my ancestors deciding, okay this is how his arm should be.