Orogeny buries deep into rock and soil, silence and speech, into the pulse of what connects us as mothers, sisters, lovers, and ghosts—the quest for home and for a language that can account for both what might become and what has been lost. Searching ecologies, history, and embodied experience, Irène Mathieu’s lyric voice pieces together a world, which is at once our own and a map of possibility, a “fetal dream of ourselves, a sea of curled and floating ideas.” —Megan Kaminski, author of Deep City, judge of the 2016 Bob Kaufman Book Prize Irène Mathieu is a pediatrician, writer, and public health researcher who has lived and worked in the United States, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Peru, and elsewhere. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Callaloo fellow, and a Fulbright scholar. Irène is the author of the poetry chapbook the galaxy of origins (dancing girl press, 2014). She holds a BA in International Relations from the College of William & Mary and a MD from Vanderbilt University.