new from Lavender Ink

CYCLONES IN HIGH NORTHERN LATITUDES
by Jeffrey Side and Jake Berry with cover and drawings by Rich Curtis

Just released from Lavender Ink. A collaborative poem by Jeffrey Side and Jake Berry. Available now at Amazon.com and Lavender Ink.

Author's comments:

Jeffrey Side

Jake and I first had the idea to collaborate on a poem in April 2008. We had no predetermined concepts or themes to conform to, preferring instead a more spontaneous “call and response” approach, whereby we would each simply respond poetically to what the other had written. For example, I would email a verse paragraph to Jake, and he would email a verse paragraph back in response.

After we felt that enough of these exchanges were ample, we joined the individual verse paragraphs together to form a seamless text. Jake then went though this text inserting line breaks in such a way as to produce new verse paragraphs that, in most instances, are an amalgam of parts of each of our original verse paragraphs—a poetic symbiosis, so to speak.

The writing of the poem was an unproblematic process. Whatever we each wrote was accepted unquestionably as part of the evolving poem; and the poem (apart from the new line breaks Jake introduced) was unedited.

The difficult part was getting it published. This was especially the case when UK publishers were approached with the book. It is difficult to get a poetry book published in the UK if one has no personal, social or professional relationship with the various publishers and editors there, in my experience at least.

For that reason, Jake and I gave up approaching UK publishers, and chose to send the poem to Bill Lavender, a US publisher, who, thankfully, saw something of value in the poem and decided to publish it. Needless to say, Jake and I are both extremely grateful to Bill for this.

Jake Berry

The process of writing the poem was fascinating in the way that all open collaborations are fascinating in that it generated a work that would have been impossible by either of the poets alone. It was written in a relatively short period of time, perhaps a few weeks. There was rarely more than a day or two between entries. It had the flow of conversation – though a conversation that produced a quasi-narrative that neither Jeff or myself anticipated. The “I” in the poem is neither one of us nor is it the sum of our combined experience. Except for a line or phrase here and there I can no longer tell who wrote what. I do recall being eager to receive Jeff's lines each day because I wanted to see where the story lead. When setting the lines out of their original email correspondence form I tried to break the lines for emphasis in the way one might pause when reading it aloud so that the natural music would be available on the page.

We didn't consider where, how, of even if the poem might be published until we felt the process had run it's course. Jeff knew of several publishers in the UK he thought might be interested. Most made excuses of the kind one learns to expect from publishers – they were overloaded with submissions – they were not looking to publish any poetry at the moment, especially long poems – and so on. I suspect most of them were probably telling the truth – though one or two responses made so little sense that it was obvious they had chosen to compose a contrivance rather than simply say they did not think the poem suitable for publication by their press.

When we queried Bill Lavender at Lavender Ink he quickly agreed to read and consider the poem and once he had the time to read it he offered to publish it. After that things moved along very smoothly and quickly. Bill suggested that we might add graphics. I immediately thought of Rich Curtis because Rich draws so well and because I knew he would respond to the poem rather than try to illustrate it – thus adding another, complimentary, dimension. Rich became another collaborator in the process. Jeff, Bill and I were very pleased with the drawings, which were delivered within days of the request, so we asked him to do the cover as well. We are all very grateful to Rich for his contribution. Once I read the book with his artwork included I found it impossible to imagine the book without it.

Ultimately, the appearance of the book was up to Bill and it is his choices for page size, layout and design that make it attractive. We are grateful to Bill for agreeing to publish the book and for the time, effort and talent he applied in bringing the pieces together and the completed book to the public. I have wanted to be among the authors at Lavender Ink for many years and I'm delighted that this particular book found its home there.


REVIEWS:


This is a modern book. A current collaboration. Jake Berry and Jeffrey Side have come together, along with the artist Rich Curtis to lead us through a journey of the stratosphere that include algorithms, the dogs of cognizance, actuary tables and a glimpse of 50 worlds passing.

 The poets write, "I have difficulty believing that I, in another time and form, created them myself." Then a few pages later write, "...and I can see the clouds forming now and a storm brewing."

 These storms are cyclones like the title suggests. Whirling from the marshes and up into the adrenaline of the clouds. The reader gets caught up in the earth, immigrants in an orchard shrouded by dunes.

 Cyclones In High Northern Latitudes delivers on the titles suggestion of flight. As John Steinbeck wrote, "The very air here is miraculous."


 Chris Mansel - author of While In Exile: The Savage Tale of Walter Seems




Depicting a waking, lucid dreamscape, the shifting interior cinema of lost love sets itself against the gathered debris of a recalled former life. Echoes of Hamsun's HUNGER congeal with Patchen's JOURNAL OF ALBION MOONLIGHT in a rich interior monologue, traipsing through the surreal landscape of memory ...

"I learned long ago
to distinguish between
strong memories and
whatever the world is ..."

Blurring the subjective/reality boundary, this is a phenomenological in-look freighted with the memories of a non-named woman, a love gone sour after a time of many kisses. Now the narrator, an outlaw on the run, hiding in cloisters, in a strange town with assumed name and face, remains sustained by these images of HER, even as the warnings indicate he is still being followed. His days reside in the "dilemma/of the broken hearted"; he begins to lose temporal perspective, a living exile from his past. He falls back to studying the indecipherable clouds ...

The collaborative narration weaves us through a shifting time-flux, a moving floor between memory-past and perception-present ... here, the outlaw is looking through a dirty Bowery window, perhaps after a day spent as an insurance clerk poring over columns of actuary tables in some vague city location ... there, we see him drinking the nepenthe of the village locals, full of his thoughts of yet a previous exiled life ... then a shifting retreat back to the actuary tables, which may hold the "traces ... of cyclones/in high northern latitudes ...

By the residue of high hope, the narrator prays that "one day you will/experience my love" - by which the shadow of longing transcends the mundanity of being a data entry clerk ...

The bold ink drawings by Rich Curtis round out this joint effort by two exemplary poets. Highly recommended reading ... 


Matt Hill - author of Dropping the Walls for a Tenuous Linkage