ANTERIORITY—CONTIGUITY. SIGNAL—PROVOKE. FRAME—IS. In one node of a conversation of discovery that has overlapped two centuries, Caroline Bergvall spoke of O Cidadán and its “oh,” thereby journeying the Galician definite article sonically toward the English “Oh”—a gesture of surprise and breath. A plethora of tonalities sited in the variable expulsion of breath situate the meaning of this particle-word O-Oh in English, as if the word followed the rules of Mandarin. The intimacy of breath is what generates meaning.

Across a trilogy of her own works that deftly and unflinchingly invoke the invitation to breath that English bears or can bear, Caroline Bergvall invites migrant barques to touch land, and these migrant movements in the language (in Drift, Norse sagas and Arab geographers, among others, are her antecedent movementers) open language, construct English and the possibility for “English” to move radically toward change, which is to say, toward ongoing and viable life. With change comes fear for some and fear’s relenting for others. Women need change (urgently), persons racialized under structures of white supremacy need change (urgently), and Bergvall is one of the polylingual trespassers who create passages among us to set stages and routes for the change we need. And, this, not from the margins, for the structure of centre-margin has fallen, but from the crossroads, the interstices, spaces always already in the space/time of formation.

Bergvall’s work (even in print) is an immersion in voice, in what articulated human voice can fashion, make, perform, and intend. As Galician poet Chus Pato has said, articu-lated voice is what separates us from animals, who have voice but do not have this artic-ulation (or have it in a very limited manner).