Our research on the identification of an artist among the religious women buried at the medieval site of Dalheim has inspired a prize-winning sonnet! Congratulations to Erin Redfern, whose poem The Artist was named runner-up for the North American Review‘s 2020 poetry prize!
The poem will soon appear in the North American Review (U of Northern Iowa), vol 305, issue 1, Spring 2020, page 5:
The Artist
The discovery of lapis lazuli in the dental calculus of an 11th-century religious woman is without precedent in the European medieval archaeological record and marks the earliest direct evidence for the use of this rare and expensive pigment by a religious woman in Germany.1
She kisses the bristles to a fine tip,
dips her brush in cerulean dust. Brings her skill
to bear on the letter, its lobe soon gravid
with blue. Blue pigment nestles in her teeth.
Some calculus takes centuries to read.
One historian guessed she was there to clean
the room. Or was she there to kiss the book?
Scrub, smooch––aren’t these the things that women do?
Let’s ask her: are you Woman, or Master?
If woman, votary of ink, with which
I net the numinous. If master, the same.
Bowed to the body of the word, she prays
bowl, serif, ligature, head
until she, too, is illuminated.
1Radini, A., M. Tromp, A. Beach, E. Tong, C. Speller, M. McCormick, J. V. Dudgeon, M. J. Collins, F Rühli, R. Kröger. “Medieval women’s early involvement in manuscript production suggested by lapis lazuli identification in dental calculus.” Science Advances 5, no. 1 (9 Jan 2019): 6, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aau7126