Published in May 2020: Cicada Sex-Songs, Music for Myotises, Poems for Plovers, and Songs for Salamanders.
A welcome note from editor Cat Dossett:
The poems in these four sibling chapbooks are more than plaques beside zoo exhibits, sharing a few tidbits of natural history for nature tourists. They are the screech of a car before a salamander crossing the road to a vernal pool. They are an audible gasp upon hearing the first clicks of cicadas in the trees. These poems are reflections on our natural world, a world we too often keep at arm's length.
Hawk & Whippoorwill's editorial focus has always been on the relationship between humankind and nature. As the Anthropocene era wears on, the strain on this relationship becomes more apparent. Once common species wane in number before our eyes. It was this threat of extinction that prompted these chapbooks. (For more on this topic, see Daniel Hudon's poignant collection, Brief Eulogies for Lost Animals.) In Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England, many creatures have felt the effects of humankind's encroachment and activity; local species of plovers, myotis bats, salamanders, and cicadas creep towards endangerment.
This set of chapbooks invites the reader to look closer at their environment. To hold their breath and listen to the summer sounds of cicada song. To overturn logs and rocks in search of salamanders in the leaf-litter. To peer from a safe distance at the blur of legs that carry a plover along the shoreline. And to strain eyes against the dusk and spot the silhouette of a flapping bat. These poems invite others to write of their own encounters, to see our relationship with animals not as a meeting of two separate worlds, but of one world of symbiotic experiences. Please read and enjoy, and share with others.
About the editor: Cat Dossett is Chapbooks Editor of Pen & Anvil Press and author of two comics: Laika, on the first dog in space, and Vessel, a confessional tale of watching Adam Driver movies in the bathtub. Her art and writing can be found in publications including Burn, New England Review of Books, and Sobotka Literary Magazine, and on the covers of these four animal chapbooks. She is on Twitter, Medium and Instagram.
Each paid copy sold of these chapbooks will ship with a bonus postcard, featuring original art of the four theme animals (pictured at right).
About our illustrator: Catherine Enwright is a doctoral candidate studying English literature at Boston College, and a 2019-2020 Bookbuilders of Boston scholarship recipient.
Published by Hawk & Whippoorwill, an imprint of Pen & Anvil Press. For permissions or bulk ordering, please contact us by email.
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