Book of Hours

Breathing new life into the form of the devotional text, Book of Hours is a powerful meditation on the conditions of place, gaze, and being.

This pocket-sized collection of original drawings and poems in English animates visual and textual poetics around the mythology of place. Recalling the richly illustrated devotional texts of early modern Europe, Book of Hours draws widely on sources from Swedish, Italian, German, and Arabic literature as well as music, photographs, architectural blueprints, and geological maps from Europe, Australia, and the Americas.

With the startling clarity of a mathematical theorem and the lyrical familiarity of a dream, Dolp’s poetry provides metaphorical instructions for the delicate work of tracing and orientation. The collection’s visual miniatures are also invested in the project of seeing: objects of meditation are collaged on and against each other, urging the reader to reconsider what is and what is yet to be.

Colored by grief, nostalgia and ecstasy, Book of Hours honors the circumambulatory paths of our lives, asking: How did we get here? Where are the borders of day and night, gravity and weightlessness, inside and outside? What have we gained and what are we in danger of losing?

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“Every generation needs to breathe new life into the old stories and to refresh the old ways of telling those stories, of conveying those truths. For centuries, Books of Hours were considered to be “pocket cathedrals,” handfuls of beauty and wisdom, stories to boost the spirit and deepen the soul. In that tradition comes Laura Dolp’s lovely collection, and it comes just in time, as a character-centering practice. Highly recommended.”

—Phil Cousineau, editor of The Soul of the World and author of The Art of Pilgrimage

“Book of Hours is a total delight: spare, elegant and deeply moving. A pocket astrarium, a piece to keep with you through all times. A paper planetarium for a difficult age.”

—Cherry Denman, illustrator of A Modern Book of Hours

“Laura Dolp’s Book of Hours interrogates the spaces in between. …Aligned with the music of poetry, her images move with sound, with structure and logic akin to lines and stanzas. Her poems are deceptively simple, rich with history and experience in the places before, and in moments of desire.”

—EJ Colen, author of The Green Condition