Available here or at Dashwood Books, NY, NY

images: Scott Alario
poem: Charlie Best
11 x 14 inches
wire-o binding
38 pages

self-published by Mooni Books, 2016
first edition of 500 copies, signed and numbered

Witch Sleepy Head in a Valley is a poem I read in a zine, written by one of my former photography students, Charlie Best. I found it hard to forget: a strange and sweet description of intimacy. My daughter is currently a Witch in Training, so the poem feels apt in relationship to her play with magic.

The form of the book grew out of a collaborative assignment I gave to my students. We swapped images with one another to practice less careful, less prescious, book design.  Singular images share the page with the materiality of our home: reflected light behind a tent, moving water, painted cardboard, dust piles on the floor. These collaged spreads echo my studio wall, or the piles on my desk, and aim towards description not always possible in a photograph alone.

The book's title is borrowed from the poem, which originally appeared in the collection Question Mark: Poems and Prose, On Art, Home, Love, People and the Queering of Everything published by bean and bun press, Buffalo, NY, 2016.