FRESH FISH art & poetry

A watery & welcome distraction arrived Jan. 7th’s nite, in email. Allow me to share this cover of a new art & poetry collection I’m pleased to be associated with.

Cover Artists: Jerri Penney, Sally Maxwell, Michele Dowdel, Gabriele DiTota, Diana Bennet

If you love visiting a salt coast, or have a friend who is enchanted by a sea urchin, squid, starfish, seahorse and others of the sandy depths, please consider buying this gift book, a non-profit project of the international Studio Art Quilt Association. 

The accomplished artists featured in FRESH FISH enjoy layering their works in hand or machine stitching or a combo. Some textile artists begin a creation with blank fabric or even papers, and then add dye, paint, embellishment, printmaking technique, drawing, photo transfer, embroidery, beading or buttons, among the many features of fine art quilting. Some pieces are collages or assemblages. I’m thrilled my poem in this juried art collection, “Fish Fandangle” is paired with the talented visual artist Maggie Vanderweit. 

While poets write about an individual work of art in what we call ekphrastic poetry, inspired after spending time with a sculpture, painting or other work of visual art, we weren’t writing poetry in that method. The process here followed a serendipitous difference to create an undersea world of joy. Literary & visual artists arrived separately at their contributions ~ working from the same sea theme ~ an unexpected process I found organic, scary & a bit magical. I hope you do, also. The 90-page book features 97 works of visual art & 39 selected poems. Although I haven’t yet held the book in my hands, my understanding is that it’s a book for both adults and school students who are enraptured by encountering all sorts of life in the sea. (Mermaid alert!) And, it’s especially for readers whose eyes love to linger over textile arts.

Until Feb. 1, FRESH FISH can be purchased & shipped postage-paid via the Studio Art Quilt Association, through this link. After, it can be found at a different price on Amazon. I’m eager to put up another post on this book at a later date, when I expect to share colleagues’ poetry from it, with a line or two of mine. But of course, I hope you will be holding the poems in your own hands.

:::: Peaceful wishes for you at this fraught time. This poetry post is part of the informal & nourishing Poetry Friday community. The first week of the new year Ruth hosted Poetry Friday & now Sylvia handles collecting us this current week with a wonderful list of poetry books to be published for young readers in 2021. The following two Fridays, we travel with Margaret & then with Laura. On the last Friday of this new month of the new year 2021, we return here to Bookseedstudio.