glacier lake | cochlea

Of all the origami characters I made, the shell was the toughest. It almost broke the series. I did find some videos on how to make origami shells and some were much simpler, but I couldn’t make just any shell. It had to be in a spiral shape. Little did I know the amount of folds it would take to make each one of those paper segments curve just right. In reality, if you look closely at the real thing, you can tell there might have been some shortcuts taken, but I think it turned out all right for the film.

And why that specific spiral shape? Inside our inner ear is tiny fluid-filled, spiral-shaped structure called the cochlea which amplifies sound waves and an instrumental part of how we hear. In this poem, I wanted to explore the idea, that even though one might grow up not speaking the language of their ancestors, that perhaps, some part of them might remember.

These poems were first published as "Fragments of Autumn at Glacier Lake" - IceFloe Press - Geographies Series, April 2024.