Book
Launch: Even in Winter
I
have just published my latest collection of poems. It is called Even in Winter. In this
collection I take a new turn in how I have put the poems together. Previous collections have been form specific:
either the entire book was dedicated to a single form (such as Microcosmos which is dedicated to renga,
or White Roses dedicated to haiku),
or each section of the book is form specific.
An example is Lanterne Light
which contains three collections of poems and all three collections are form
specific; the lanterne, the tetractys, and the cinquain.
In Even in Winter I have mixed the forms,
so the collection is not form specific.
All the poems are formal, but the forms are interspersed and not grouped
into form specific collections.
Five
forms are used: Etheree, Fibonacci, Lucas, the Even Sequence, and 100 Friends. These forms are explained as part of the back
matter in a section called ‘Afterthoughts’.
I felt that the different forms worked well with each other because all
five of the forms share a similar overall shape. All of the forms start with very short lines
and then expand into longer lines. What
differs among the forms is the pace of the expansion. Here is a quick look at the syllable counts
for the five forms used in the collection:
Etheree:
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
Fibonacci: 1-1-2-3-5-8-13-21,
etc.
Lucas: 2-1-3-4-7-11-18-29,
etc.
Even
Sequence: 2-2-4-6-10-16, etc.
100
Friends: 2-4-2-4-6-4-6-8-6-8-10-8-10-12-10
I
think of this collection as a kind of bouquet of forms. Hopefully they are attractively
arranged. The collection covers a number
of themes; nature and seasonality are central.
Spirituality and my commitments as a Quaker are woven into the collection,
hopefully in a not too obtrusive way. I
think I would say that the overriding theme is the human relationship to
eternity in an ephemeral world.
Even in Winter
ISBN:
9781514224649
118
pages
$12.00
