Our Concealed Ballast, by Marian Macken

Our Concealed Ballast by Marian Macken is a spare and beautifully crafted mem-oir chronicling her passage to a place of calm after a shattering personal loss. Allusions to a journey occur throughout but are encapsulated most poignantly in the title. Ballast, typically loaded into a ship’s bilge to provide stability in rough seas, is the term Macken adopts to describe a reservoir of “emotion and sol-ace,” a nonmaterial weight that keeps her on an even keel and moving forward. Her memoir, illustrated with a selection of elegant black-and-white images by Sydney-based photographer Joshua Morris,chronicles the loading and redistri-bution of this ballast through grief and inner turmoil.