My debut collection, Never More There, is getting closer and closer to being print-ready. I’ve been working with my publisher to finalise the order, text, and design of the book and thus far this has gone swimmingly. At the moment I’m going through a final proof of the typeset to make sure everything is in top shape without errors.
For those of you interested, the book is due out in October. You can contact Nightwood Editions or Amazon to get your very own copy. If you prefer the walk-in bookstore approach, I’m sure you’ll be just as successful.
I’ve been up to my eyeballs in reading lately and haven’t had as much time to post as I would like. I’ve managed, however, to crawl out from under the pile to present you with this: a poem of mine that appeared in Paragon 2 a while back.
It’s great to read a new collection of poems from a group of poets with a handle on craft and who show promise for future writing. It’s refreshing to read works that are filled with young ambition, experimentation and style-forging.
Tangerine Parallelograms is a new anthology containing work by poets who recently have taken part in Newfoundland poet Mary Dalton’s creative writing classes at Memorial University. These poems have all the passion and immediacy of fresh, eager writers tempered through seminar discussion and workshop atmosphere. Variety in voice, style, and subject matter make this collection a well worth the reading. There are traditional forms — Andrew Erb’s “The Bear Attack Ballad”, Jam Michael Macdonald’s “The Destruction of Element” (sestina), and Jody Beth-Lee’s “Nan” and “Pop” (cinquains) to name a few, showing that these students have begun with tradition, where all good writers should. Conversely, there are experiments with free verse structure in which the poet allows words to play on the page itself, both figuratively and topographically — “Danielle Tucker’s “The Gardener’s Daughter”, Kyle Carpenter’s “Ferrying”, and Stephen Aylward’s “ConfusIonIsm”.
This book scans some of the best works by these new writers and presents them in a well designed, appealing package. Often student collections present merely a few good poems and an abundance of ill-chosen ones or those lacking a strength consistent throughout the collection. Tangerine Parallelograms avoids this pitfall of juvenilia and provides the reader with strong, relevant writing from cover to cover. Keep your eyes out for these emerging writers in the coming years.
