Cover design for A dança áspera das raízes ("The rough dance of roots"), the fourth book of poems by Bárbara Mançanares, published by Praga.

The title takes root. The letters were drawn by hand, irregular, with a displaced blue shadow that gives each one a slight tremble — the dance. And from the word RAÍZES ("roots") real roots descend, branching down to the foot of the page, where they meet the author's name. Typography and illustration are one and the same: the word is the plant.

Terracotta, yellow and blue. Three colours of earth and fire. The terracotta background is the soil; the yellow, the exposed root; the blue, the damp shade. The book digs through "layers of grief, permanence and memory" in a "geology of what we call familiar" — the palette is that of the dig.

Inside, the forest. The endpapers repeat the root in a continuous pattern, yellow on terracotta, like a fabric. The open cover has the back in petrol blue and yellow with the text by Júlia Vita, the author's portrait and the introduction by Juliana C. Alvernaz on the flap.