Four Neat Holes have been punched in National Poetry Month.
Local wordsmith Al Rempel and imagesmith Mo Hamilton cobbled together a new chapbook of original work. The two artists did their respective creation in collaboration and this week the public gets to crack the cover for the first time.
"I had a suite of 13 poems that didn't fit within any of my previous books," said Rempel. "They have found new life because Mo Hamilton has done an original piece of art for each one, so there is enough material now for a chapbook."
"Because the poems are almost a bit surreal, I've tried to recreate that surreality, there is a bit of abstraction that comes from reading the poems," said Hamilton. "I think it honestly took me a few attempts before I found the visual balance I was wanting. I didn't get it bang on the first go. I had to brood on it a bit, and as I made a whole bunch of illustrations in a different way than I normally do. I was learning a gelli printing method. It's a gelatin-based surface you paint onto. And I limited my pallet to white, black, grey and red, and the variations on those colours."
In general, the poems tell, using unconventional language and word choices, the story of two sets of siblings who grow up in much different household conditions than each other. Two live, as the cliche says, on the wrong side of the tracks in a rougher part of town, living with an alcoholic father and a mother who overcompensates by working really hard. Meanwhile the other siblings live in a country home with their grandma. There are lessons within each and between each, said Rempel.
He and Hamilton have collaborated before. They worked together on a video-poem (essentially a music video for the reading of a poem) called Paper Clothes, along with videographer Stephen St. Laurent and musician Raghu Lokanathan. It's available for viewing on YouTube.
The fruits of that project prompted Rempel and Hamilton to continue into this new project.
"She works a lot in collage work and that allows for an almost surrealistic quality and an openness to possibilities. That matches these particular poems quite well," Rempel said. "I think she produced fantastic work. It's made out of found paper as well as paper she has printed on and then used within the work. It goes beyond straight illustration. There are sometimes elements of the picture that come from the top or the sides, so it isn't traditional pictorial. It is skewed from normal representation. It has a literal layer and then there's a dreamlike and almost conceptual layer to it as well. Perfect."
Hamilton said "This is the first book I'd ever illustrated so it was going well outside my realm of comfort, at first, but I pushed through and I feel really good about how it turned out. I think it was really successful, and it is another way to help people engage with poetry. I think of poetry almost similar to painting in that you are creating visuals for people, and I think it went together really well."
The book is called Four Neat Holes published by Leaf Press. It will be launched with a reception at Art Space Thursday at 7:30 p.m. This casual event is free to attend, with copies of the book available for sale and autograph.
There will be light refreshments served and live music by The Steal Brothers.
