JackPine Press Chapbook Project With Lia Pas

Lia and I have had our proposal to create a chapbook accepted by Saskatoon-based JackPine Press. We’ve been sitting on this information for a few weeks now, and have already told a number of people about it in person, but due to overwork and a certain amount of inertia hadn’t gotten around to announcing it on either of our blogs. Here’s the scoop.

The working title of the book is Cryptic Species, and will consist of Lia’s1 poems and my drawings. Thematically, we plan to integrate the anatomical- and body-centric themes of Lia’s recent work with some of my drawings that have a macabre and less metaphysically-serene quality than the work most people usually expect from me. That’s right: dark, moody, and a bit clinical.

This will be our first-ever collaboration of significant size2, and we’re really excited about it. Beyond what I’ve already noted—and short of posting our project proposal—I’m not sure what else I can write here to give an idea of what the finished piece will look like.

Cryptic Species—or whatever it ends up being titled by the time we’re finished—will come out in June 2008. As with all of the offerings from JackPine Press, Cryptic Species will be a limited-edition handmade book. I’m not sure if JackPine does pre-orders, but they do have a subscription service. You can find out more—though probably nothing more about our project—at the JackPine Press web site.

You’d think that we’d have collaborated on an artistic project sooner than almost 15 years into our marriage, but I suppose it’s better late than never.

FOOTNOTES

  1. Lia is, of course, the multi-talented Lia Pas, whose list of accomplishments is too long for me to summarize here. Also, we are married to each other. ^
  2. I’m not counting the sonic improvisation group DUCT, or the performance we did together as part of my Crossroads project from 2002. This might be seen as arbitrary, but from my perspective, I base the distinction on the fact that Cryptic Species will be our first major collaborative project in which both of us are working in one of our primary fields of creative activity. I’ve always seen my music and sound projects as a bit of a sideline. I’ve also not included A Taste of Wings—our recent collaboration on a visual poem—because it is such a small piece, and also because no one knows about it yet. But that’s a topic for a future post.^

4 thoughts on “JackPine Press Chapbook Project With Lia Pas

  1. Pingback: yoga & sencha & dragon pearls » Blog Archive » chapbook forthcoming

  2. Pingback: yoga & sencha & dragon pearls » Blog Archive » Husk - launch 18 June 2008

  3. Pingback: Husk: Chapbook Launches June 18 » Ed Pas’ Journal

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