This dust, these rays, this strange internal sense
that after all these years, I finally exist —
all of this is only mine through you.
In her mid-40s, the US poet and scholar Joy Ladin transitioned from male to female, affirming an identity she had long felt within her but, for many reasons, was reluctant to pursue. In her poem ‘Letter to My Body’, she folds time to converse with her former self, creating a shared universe in which her pre- and post-transition selves are at once intimate friends, gentle adversaries and, indeed, one and the same. This animated adaptation of the work melds audio of Ladin reading the poem on the radio and podcast programme On Being with an ever-drifting animated treatment from the Polish animator Ala Nunu Leszyńska that seems to straddle the quotidian and the abstract. Through this treatment, Ladin and the filmmakers craft a small yet rich world where self-discovery is both continuous and endless.
