Crossings: a journey through borders
NICHOLAS MURRAY
This impressive collection of short pieces is part travelogue and part meditation on other, metaphysical borders the biographer and poet Nicholas Murray has experienced.
He has traversed various continents, countries and counties. Borders, he muses early on, “are not attractive places. They want to instruct you, as forcefully as they can, about their importance, about what they signify, so everything about them is designed to underscore that meaning …”
On crossing the frontier from North Africa to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, he notes how roughly the Spanish policemen treat the Moroccans: “I have seen farmers deal this way with recalcitrant sheep.”
