Eavesdrop

Author: Sarah Riggs 

Publisher: Chax Press (2020)

"If in Sarah Riggs' Pomme & Granite, language shimmers as register of pure light, Eavesdrop's iridescence signs the stakes of dance. Each sequence, in deploying fresh ways to balance language differences, brings the ear in touch with the whole of thinking bodies, bodies that are elements of the sky—yet knowing when to hit the soundboard of meaning, hard. The stakes are love and the existential tremour of our moment, culled in passim (and in passion) from speech on three continents and dreams and ancient history; or, yet, eavesdropped from interior' and 'exterior' gleanings swimming under a sky full of drones... This exquisite pas-de-trois—engaging, as text or subtext, English, French, Arabic, moves toward a stunning finale, hued in the stark black and white of certain cemeteries."

–Gail Scott

"Sarah Riggs' Eavesdrop murmurs the cosmic rotation of hours and instants. It whispers in many tongues, chants in numerous voices, hears the howls from our history. It dives into black holes; the extermination of Native Americans and slavery. She names and draws. 'Even the stones are crying from what has happened,' harmonizes Riggs with a Syrian refugee. The hour and the eye, the ear and the word are one in that cosmology where before history befell, creation set the universe in motion. Riggs reaches this point, to start again. Eavesdrop is hospitable to our Tragedy, yet it loops in its wanderings in our time space and harvests all the hope and affirmation. She is in the inside of the inside where hours occur and times are mingled in the inward cosmology. She reaches the outside of the outside where she states and acknowledges Earth's imminent disasters, voices fear and pronounces our impotence. In her call to women and children Sarah Riggs speaks to us all and incites us to action."

–Safaa Fathy