In January, Phoenicia will be publishing Ice Mountain: An Elegy, a book of short poems by my longtime close friend and collaborator Dave Bonta. The cover linocut illustration and design are by me, and the book will also include five of my original linocut illustrations, inspired by Dave's poems.
Dave has just written a post at Via Negativa , "The Ice Mountain Cometh," about the genesis of the book, and how it morphed into a collaboration that includes me, and will soon extend to the videographer Marc Neyes and perhaps others, and I thought you might find it as interesting as I did. In his post, Dave talks not only about poetry itself, but print vs digital distribution, and his own commitment to poetry being accessible to everyone, not just to read, but to use and build on creatively. But he's also aware of the financial realities of putting books into print, and discusses how we made the decisions about publication and creative access for this project.
And, last but not at all least, he tells the story of the "porcupine tree" on the cover and what has strangely happened to it...
The picture of Dave above was taken by Alison Kent, and he notes that the sweater he's wearing was knit by Rachel Rawlins according to a traditional Icelandic design named after Odin, the Norse god who brought the gift of poetry to humans.
(Ice Mountain: An Elegy is now available for pre-order at a special price, and will ship in late January. 10% of all proceeds will benefit local and regional conservation efforts in central Pennsylvania.)
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