Multitasking

Many thanks to Kathleen Kirk, who reviewed my chapbook Inksuite over at Escape into Life this past week. You can read it here.

One of the poems in the book is “Reading While Walking.” I won’t claim that I read & walk terribly often, but I certainly do, as long as it’s daytime and there are few people about. Just as with texting & driving, this could be dangerous, but I only practice it on familiar routes. For me the hardest thing about reading & walking comes after I look up to check I'm not headed for a stack of horse manure and I have to find my place back on the page. 

Though I’m comfortable reading & walking, only recently did I get the nerve to read in the bathtub. Despite my worry about waterwarp, it can be done, though even the most careful bather will splatter at least a little water on the pages. The real problem is where to put the book when you want to soap up or refresh the hot water. You can’t put it on the tub edge and in my case the floor isn’t a good option either. My book emerged whole, but my preoccupation with splash-damage didn't make the experience as pleasurable as it should be. So it gave me a laugh when I found this picture on the internet. 

Inksuite

I have a new chapbook. Isn’t it gorgeous? “Inksuite,” it’s called, and the cover art is by Emmanuel Polanco, the Parisian collagist. He recycled the cover of an old book to make this collage, which shows a schoolboy standing in an odd little garden of objects, holding what appears to be a textbook. From above, ink comes raining from a cloud formed by a worn-away edge of the cover. I love the elements -- the geometric plaid, the Sphinx, the one wing, the scribbles, and the gash. Thank you to Emmanuel.

The poems all have to do in some way with reading and books, and also with typefaces and the written word. The poem “On Receiving a Rejection Note One Year and Seven Months after Submitting” is included for its mention of runes, for example. There are poems about specific books, and as always I included some ghazals - “Book of Hours Ghazal” and “Flip-Book Ghazal,” which was recently published by Kestrel. 

You can order the chap at Dancing Girl Press for $7 (plus postage). You can also do DGP’s bundle deal and order any five books for $25, which is a good way to discover new poets. You could even include my previous DGP chap “Excuse me while I wring this long swim out of my hair” in it! I also recommend J. Hope Stein’s “Talking Doll,” which I just read, and “Boom of a Small Cannon” by Mary Ann Samyn. I loved both those chaps. You wouldn’t have to leave the letter S!

The Next Big Thing, or small

As I mentioned last post, Kathleen Kirk tagged me to write about The Next Big Thing, a questionnaire for writers on a project or book.

What is your working title of your book /story/project? 

Inksuite 

Where did the idea come from for the book? 

In general, from reading. I’ve written a number of poems about books and reading, and a couple years ago when I was reading a stiff hardbound copy of Madame Bovary (?) or The Line of Beauty (?), it occurred to me that the “Note on the Type” at the end of the book was longer than the author’s thumbnail biography, and more interesting. I loved that – it was so full of LORE. So I set out to write some poems on imaginary typefaces, too. 

What genre does your book fall under? 

Bibliophilic poetry. 

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

Donald Sutherland would play the imaginary typographer Robert Crèvecoeur. The nuns in Sognidhia would be played by Winona Ryder, Keira Knightly and Natalie Portman, who all resemble each other. Daniel Craig would make a good Thomas Hardy. 

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 

It will be published by Dancing Girl Press this year.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

It was never written as a manuscript. It came together piece by piece with separate poems over years. Some of them were published in 2007, maybe 2006. A couple others were published this month. 

What other books/poems would you compare this story to within your genre? 

Nothing comes to me immediately, but some other poems on books would be - 

“I Was Sitting” by Juan Ramón Jiménez 

"Every Morning after Killing Thousands of Angels" by Tamura Ryuichi

“He ate and drank the precious words” by Emily Dickinson

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats 

Who or what inspired you to write this book? 

I had a number of poems mentioning books or a specific book or writer, and then I got into the typography poems. I also was writing a poem called Inksleep, which is still under construction, and the word Inksuite came into my head and it seemed too good a word to waste. 

Other than that, the poems’ inspirations include the Russian gulag, Wallace Stevens, Chinese cabbage, Roget’s Thesaurus, Jude the Obscure.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? 

There will be a killer collage by Emmanuel Polanco on the cover. 

Links to some of the poems: 

Book of Hours Ghazal 

Bedside Books  

Typeface #54 & Typeface #68 

Tagged by: Kathleen Kirk 

Tagged by me but not obliged to follow through: Charmi Keranan 

Laura E. Davis

I was supposed to tag five people, but being too busy for so much admin, I couldn't. So, instead, here are some other writers tagged in this project: 

Donna Vorreyer 
Margaret Bashaar 

Cynthia Reeser