‘echoes in the void’, book cover on Amazon.ca
The finished crystal skull painting. The text took me two tries to stencil onto the canvas, but it worked fine the second time. The first time the transfer tape was too sticky and it wouldn’t let go of the stencil, which cut perfectly on the Cricut. I need better lighting to take a better photograph. The text reads:
Our hearts beat a mantra for love everlasting,
I miss the momentum the most,
bones are like words in the language of sorrow,
but a ghost is a ghost is a ghost.
from the poem the blood angel v:28
The original photo.
Glass skull and heart photograph for the poem ‘the blood angel’. For the new book ‘echoes in the void’.
Ghost and bone, assemblage. Plastic found object from the beach at Longpoint, Ont. Wooden frame, wooden letters, acrylic paint, glue. I think it’s a plastic dryer vent pipe, but it looks like a windpipe to me.
Almost finished. Needs a few corrections here and there, but I like it.
The finished painting with the text. I like the colours.
I’m printing the pages of the book as I do them, and I’m putting them in a binder, so I can keep track of what’s on which page. I have lots of poems, but I need images to go with them. I’m starting with all the paintings I have that didn’t make it into the last book, ‘dancing down entropy street’.
The binder, in progress. This is the painting for the poem ‘the keepers of memory’.
There’s a book-within-a-book. This is the inscription page for the poem ‘the rapture of the seraphim’. It’s an altered photograph of the top of a cake.
‘eye see you’ assemblage. Shadow box, text dice, jewelry, plastic hearts, plastic eye, plastic top from a bottle of something, found on the road, squished; acrylic paint.
For the poem ‘bones are just ghosts in a shroud’.
The world held its breath while the whole apparatus
ground to a shuddering halt,
the by-standers stood there,
with malice aforethought,
filming your deadly assault.
I think I’ve finished the book. I keep writing new poems that I want to include, but I have to stop somewhere, so I’m stopping now. Maybe. There’s one more poem I might want to include, I’ll have to think about it. Then I get to upload it to my Kindle page, and see what happens to the architecture when that happens. I almost always have to make corrections to the layout to get the pages to look the way I want them to look. I’m not looking forward to that, but hey, maybe I did it right this time. This is the back cover for the book ‘the book of the dead’, vol. 2.
The last poem is a haiku, called ‘Empathy equals Memory
times the Sea of Love, Twice. (E=Mc2) I wrote it in 2015. It’s a mathematical haiku.
One two three four five
six seven eight seven six
five four three two one.
(Five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables).
The book has ended up being 150 pages, which is a good number. The last one was 144. Now I can start the next one.
The basic premise for the poetry is that every syllable is a musical note, and that even when you speak, you sing. If we didn’t, we’d sound like early voice synthesizers from the 70’s, so all speech is musical.
The first thing I had to figure out was that all syllables are not created equal. Stressed syllables are higher notes than unstressed syllables. You really have to write the words as musical notations. I did that with one verse at the back of the previous book, ‘dancing down entropy street’. I’m not a musician, so I got a program that writes musical notes from a computer keyboard to illustrate the idea. In the beginning, I didn’t appreciate this fact, and some of the poetry worked by accident, and some of it didn’t. It took me quite a bit longer than it should have to figure out what I was doing wrong. You can do short ‘songs’, or long ‘songs’. I like longer ones, because they flow better. All poetry is like bonsai. Sometimes you have to wire the branches to make a pleasing shape.
I say poems are like dreams, because you get the emotional truth without necessarily getting the facts. That sounds like I’m saying poems are alternative facts, but I’m not. The truth is the truth. Or maybe your heart has one truth, and your brain, another. Maybe they’re mutually exclusive. Or maybe they’re the opposite sides of the same coin. Either way, they’re metaphors for the real world. Poems to me are also like collages. They’re bits and pieces glued together to make a new image of something, like dreams. I do have underlying themes that come from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, and ‘The Garden of Eden’, and other myths and legends.
If you took all of the water out of the well, there would be a small object at the bottom, a blue butterfly, a wish to be remembered. A wish not to be forgotten. A hand-print on a cave wall, to say, ‘I was here’.
A burning of the clocks. A time machine. A divination of swans. A skeleton dancing in the dark.
Fairy light halo photograph. Jo Forrest 2020.
This is the photo of me for the back cover of ‘echoes in the void’. It’s the photo I took after the bit of skin cancer on my neck was removed. I’m standing in front of the ‘jester’ painting I did for the previous book, ‘dancing down entropy street’. I’m now struggling with uploading my files to the KDP website, on Amazon. I wanted to do my own covers, since I don’t like any of their ready-made templates. Progress is, as always, slow. I did manage to upload both the cover files and the contents of the book, but layout issues always show up at that stage, which need to be fixed. Hopefully, I’ll manage to upload it soon. Any day now… Then I can start the next one. No title so far. I’m sure it will come from a poem, as usual. I’m writing #733 now, called ‘love is a runaway train’.
‘A little bit crazy’, was how they described me, but fear without proof is insane, watch me turn hope into autobiography, love is a runaway train’.
Finally. It only took me 6 hours to upload the file to my Kindle Publishing file, but it’s done. I poured a shot of something from the liquor cabinet to celebrate.
Here is the Amazon page. The file is in review, so I’ll have to wait a day or so for it to be approved. Then I can order a copy for myself, so I can proof-read it in ink on paper. I did my best to proof-read it on the computer screen, but I always seem to miss a word or two. Still, it’s done.
A close up of the Amazon page. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that it’s finally done. I burned my lunch, because I wandered off while it was uploading…but I don’t care.
Of course, I have to reformat the whole thing for the e-book. That’s next.
I ordered a copy of my book ‘echoes in the void’, to proofread. I always find it easier to spot mistakes if it’s ink on paper, for some reason.
The cover. It’s a collage of images of the funky 70’s light fixture in the basement stairwell, taken through my crystal ball lens.
The blue light photograph.
The book is now also available as an e-book. I had to reformat every page from a two-column layout, to a single column layout. I’m getting faster at that.