Ottawa XPress

Volume 12, Issue 15

April 14th, 2005

Matthew Firth

 

Sorrowland Sheds New Tears

 

                 New Ottawa micropublisher Sorrowland Press will launch its first two publications this Sunday as part of the Dusty Owl Reading Series. Both I See a Darkness and Jalapeno Diamond are chapbook-sized poetry anthologies with local, Ottawa U, national and international contributors.

Ottawa U student Damien Bailey is editor of both books and founder of the press. He started                  Sorrowland Press "to lodge artists and subjects that are, perhaps, left cold from the frozen state of current artistic ambitions." Bailey printed 250 copies of I See a Darkness and 200 of Jalapeno Diamond. Each sells for $3. They'll be available at the launch and afterward at select Ottawa indie bookshops.

                 Bailey provides a somewhat discursive intro to I See a Darkness. His best take on darkness is: "It's about every fucking tear shed since the formation of life. It's about feeling-everything." His intro creates visceral expectations and, fortunately, several of the poets deliver.

                 Rachel Abraham's "we pulled apart the doves" is a bleak moment of cold-hearted violence. John Kehoe provides dark humour in "Brooklyn's Central Booking." Seymour Mayne examines the dilemma of burial in the dead of the cold Canadian winter. But it ain't all black gloom-a touch of light is cast on the collection by the editor's four-year-old daughter Liana Bailey in "My First Poem."

                 Jalapeno Diamond centres on drugs and hallucination. Jake Braun's "Opiatic" is succinct and sharp: "Quiet pain, without relapse/ until I come to life." "Teeth" by Bob Marcacci reads like the paranoid ramblings of a madman on mushrooms. Sandra Ridley's "Orchard Park" provides effective contrast to the rants-hers is a sombre, contemplative piece on the sad plight of a hospitalized and drugged old woman.

                 In both collections, Bailey has assembled some vibrant and compelling poems. For more info, see the press's website: www.sorrowlandpress.com.

 

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Dusty Owl

Book launch

April 2005

Steve Zytveld

 

Sorrowland Press launched two great collections of poetry, I See a Darkness and Jalapeno Diamond, to a packed house and even a TV camera.

 

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UESA Newsletter

April 2005

Sarah Ruffolo

 

I See a Darkness and Jalapeno Diamond:

Two chapbooks from Sorrowland Press

 

Two of Ottawa's latest small press offerings – editor Damien Bailey has created a forum, through Sorrowland Press, for alternative creativity. With these two themed chapbooks, one dealing with variations of darkness, the other about drugs, a potential exists for the work featured to toe the line of the overused image or plain old cliché. This is not the case. Instead, Bailey has collected a fine assortment of both unique and stimulating pieces.

                 Each chapbook features work of varying degrees of sophistication, and there are some poems that distinguish themselves above the rest. In I See a Darkness Jesse Ferguson's poem “Springtime in the Byword Market” delves into the darker side of the Market and subtly paints a most bleak picture: “Like wings of a bird that ate plastic and starved, / spring flutters in its branches, a tattered grocery bag / crinkling in the breeze, a fresh season's flag.”

                 Rachel Abraham's poem “She'll be dead” parallels the line now so well known from Canadian poet Irving Layton: “the inescapable lousiness of growing old” – with potent lines such as “you may escape me but / You can't escape your body's rot,” this poem is exceptionally haunting.

Also worth noting is Laurie Milovanovic's piece “Angles” which features an interesting image of stone as secret keeper: “We cut our teeth and bleed / On the pieces of love shattered, broken, scorned.”

                 Jalapeno Diamond is also home to some exceptional pieces. With its dicey subject matter, the chapbook's focus is on a slightly uncomfortable setting and it is interesting to see the varying directions the work takes. Bob Marcacci's piece “Teeth” is surprisingly original and takes the reader through his drug trip using unexpected images such as: “i am a pine cone/ i don't want october to end / the message / trembles with teeth.” John Kehoe's mysterious piece “Sex/Drugs/Rock and Roll” complements the theme of the chapbook well. Lines such as ``We change / change being a greater weapon than time or distance / eclipse the past with a new self / and no regrets in becoming strangers” are examples of his skilled and enigmatic voice.

                 Sandra Ridley takes the theme in a different direction than many of the other poets. Her poem “Orchard Park” strikes a mournful tone when describing the dehumanizing effects of certain medicinal drugs, rather than the recreational tone many of the other pieces take: ”didn't know her name or that she played cribbage / drank Irish cream, held her grandchild's hand.”

 

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For even more reviews and mentions click here.

 

 

 

Sorrowland Press Reviews and Respect

©2008 Sorrowland Press and all respective artists within.