Toromiro novel (Spring 2015 – present)

In 2015, while completing some of my research notes for what was to become my book, Strange Adventures, I was struck for the first time by the importance of the motif of the toromiro plant for Pierrette Fleutiaux’s novel, L’Expédition.  Aware that I had perhaps not quite thoroughly investigated the symbolism of the plant, and its centrality to the novel’s location on Easter Island, I looked it up online, alert for something that would add to meanings of the novel.  What I found was a entrancing tale of death, life and passion, wildness and adventure… and something more, a sensation of momentousness.

The toromiro was alive somehow.  Something strange had made a connection.  And all that year, as I worked on research and worked on consulting, something was growing within me.  And one day, words appeared. A revelation: ‘I need to visit the toromiro’.

And so I wrote a message to the Botanical Gardens in which this plant had taken refuge, and where its story was unfolding: 

Dear Sir/Madam,
 Please forgive me writing in English; I am afraid I am not proficient in Swedish.
 I am writing with a request for help in relation to a writing project which includes the motif of the Toromiro plant.

and before I knew it, a Botanist had written back, and a visit had been confirmed, and I was an Artist-in-Residence at a cultural centre called Konstepidemin, ‘Epidemic of Art’, and I was writing a novel about the toromiro.

And the novel was writing me.