Familial histories as literary project can easily devolve into self-obsession—the writer becoming an uncomplicated hero—but successful investigations offer a vision of how all people are unconsciously shaped by our origins.

Nick Martino’s debut poetry collection, Scrap Book, does just that. Scrap Book is a collection of poems and a familial archive. Martino’s work is interwoven with his mother’s handwritten journal entries scanned directly from her diaries. The inclusion of these journals weaves his mother’s perspective into the collection’s foundation, transforming the entire journey into a multivocal experience.

Our first glimpse of Martino’s mother’s handwriting is heavily cropped, only faintly recognizably as an abstract curve of script.

Before revealing a more legible version of his mother’s narrative, Martino directs the reader towards his mother’s interiority and her struggles:

See the road map

she stashes deep in the glovebox

beside the Polaroids of my father

and her journal: for when I need time

alone

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