This post is a very long time in coming, but I have a better excuse than usual. I just put together, printed, and provided to bookstores my first real book: an illustrated poetry chapbook. It’s very, very short (ten pages, four in black and white), because I wanted it to be affordable for both me and customers, and because I wanted a project I could complete in a manageable period of time. It’s also as self-published as self-published can be–I printed the things at FedEx and sewed them together with thread designed for tying oboe reeds (I was an oboist in high school and still have all my old stuff).
It’s entitled Of Elsewhere: An Exoskeleton, and it was a test run for Evernost–could I really achieve a good, or even interesting, result superimposing text on my own artwork? Would I have the motivation? The answer to the first question (though it’s always hard to tell) seems to be “good enough for me at least,” and the second seems so far to be yes.
Of Elsewhere also is, as the title hints, an “exoskeleton” of Evernost–the poems and short prose pieces therein form a sketchy, cryptic outline or description that I want to embody less abstractly in Of Evernost itself. It’s an exoskeleton and not a skeleton because I like the idea that it can be shed and grown anew as the work itself metamorphoses (or just grows). The pieces follow the cycle of the seasons and also form a very loose narrative.
Finally, here are a couple of images from the interior:
Of Elsewhere 