CAConrad’s exhilarating work is centred on the (Soma)tic ritual, their celebrated practice which draws on nature, crystals, meditation and interactions with strangers to create an ‘extreme present’ of unfettered creativity from which poems can emerge. This book gathers the results of a single new ritual, focused on fellow animals who have found ways to thrive in the Anthropocene, and spanning environments from Seattle – a city built in the midst of an abundant nontropical rainforest – to the Mojave Desert. The poet receives gifts from a crow; associates different parts of their body with nine different species encountered in the desert; and joins a woman each morning in feeding rats in the streets of Rome, taking turns looking out for the police. The poems that result are an ode to survival in a world that humanity has poisoned, and a testament to a love that knows no by-laws.