120 x 170mm, 112 pages, Colour printing, Perfect bound, Softcover, Ed. of 400, 2022

Sixty minutes into planetary lockdown, as gas clouds flare diabolically across the horizon, a burst pipe floods Selcan Peksan’s Istanbul apartment. Encircled by notebooks and companioned by her beloved German shepherd, the poet seeks to transcend claustrophobia and eco-anxiety by envisioning a future unpeopled planet supporting novel mutations of non-human life. Come Lockdown Year Five, the subterranean rumbles of resurgent nature coalesce into a riotous carpet of overgrowth subsuming “virtually all signs of human civilization.”

But as trees begin to uprise, gyrate, and parade, the poet, having outlined a deposition of the worst trespasses of industrialized society, feels comfortable at last: “This is my garden; this is my playground.” Pacing the narrative’s relentless plunge through ensuing eons, artist Maja Daneková generates atmospheres backdropping Peksan’s lyric excursion beyond the Anthropocene to the dawn of a neo-primeval.

Slippage is translated from Turkish by Anna Wood.

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