Poetry
April 12, 2019
Shades of Blue: The Journey of Awakening is a collection of eighty soulful poems by West Coast dreamer Gino Vallejo. Including fresh and former works, the volume bears witness to life’s continua—no emotional hue forgotten. Adding to the experience, long-time collaborator Stephanie LeVasseur provides a dazzling range of illustrations to compliment prominent pieces. Altogether larger-than-life, the tour depicts transcendence. From a celestial introduction, “The Heavenly Gate”, Vallejo’s voyage proceeds through time and space, navigating all manner of subject-matter. Selections such as ‘Purple Rome’ and ‘Cleopatra: The Song of the Nile’ meditate upon history’s cyclical nature, fixing on awesome fact. Others, like “Awaiting Venus”, walk us through mystical annals of lore, while ‘Diamond Star’ and kindred pieces celebrate love’s deliverance. Where ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ and “Vanity” denounce man’s flaws, “Fruit of My Life” revels in fatherhood. “Searching Far and Wide” speculates on the key to happiness, “End of Days” assesses modern tyranny, “A Warrior’s Legacy” serves to humanize the soldier’s plight, and “Through a Winter’s Cold” emphasizes the need for God in our hearts. Along the way, we study loss, America’s reputation abroad, terrorism, heartbreak, art and what it means to live.
September 5, 2018
"Alone" by KD Langford
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A collection of 43 modern day poetry with illustrations.
About The Author:
KD Langford is a writer from Manchester, in the United Kingdom.
The story so far:
We all have to begin our journey somewhere in life. For me, it was at primary school when my teacher, Mrs Harvey introduced me Creative Writing and I never looked back. Mrs Harvery was a great inspiration to me, and it soon became my favourite lesson.
The years passed by and I found myself at High School where embraced my writing with the thanks to various teachers no one more so than my English and form teacher, Tony Porter.
I'd write two pages, take it back to him, and he'd say "Right, go and write me some more." That's just what I did. At Culcheth High School there was a building known as 'B-block' it was a three-storey concrete block, and he'd allow us to have free roam of the top floor. I'd go and sit in B-32 which was Miss Harper's R.E room and there I'd write, my first piece, called 'Grey Hall.' And at lunchtimes, Malcolm Smith (RIP) would give up his lunch hour and open up A-17 in A-block which was the I.T room. There I'd sit on one of the many BBC-B computers and writer using 'Interword' an old, but outstanding word processor. At the time there American TV series 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' was being aired in the UK, and I'd sit in A-17 and write a story about Admiral Nelson and Captain Lee Crane.
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[divider height="30" style="default" line="default" themecolor="1"]August 28, 2018
"Tweets from the Trenches: Little True Stories of Life & Death on the Western Front" by Jacqueline Carmichael
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Tweets from the Trenches: Little True Stories of Life & Death on the Western Front tells over 100 little true stories from the Great War. It is being released during the 100th anniversary of the final hundred days of the First World War.
Using original prose and small stories pulled from journals, letters and memoirs of Allied soldiers from Prince Edward Island to Yorkshire to South Carolina. Full of vintage images, it touches on everything from brave homing pigeons to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Author Jacqueline Larson Carmichael had two grandfathers on the ground with the Canadian Expeditionary Force throughout WWI on the Western Front. Her curiosity about the experience of George “Black Jack” Vowel, an American-Canadian, and Charles W.C. Chapman, led to walking on the Western Front herself as part of a research project.
The terse battlefield notes were the social media posts and tweets of their day - they just took a little longer, she said.
“I was struck by the compelling simplicity of the words - things like, ‘Delivering rations to the front/dodging bullets & mortar fire both ... Bullets ripped the dirt up all round me but none of them were marked Black Jack,’” Carmichael said.
In 2016, on a travel writing research trip, she traveled to Belgium, France and Germany, walking portions of the Western Front where both her grandfathers fought in World War I.
The long-time journalist, whose work has been seen in The Dallas Morning News, the Toronto Sun, Entrepreneur Magazine, found footnoted prose a great way to quickly tell little stories pulled from history.
“I consider this a kind of flash documentary creative non-fiction,” Carmichael said, noting most of the pieces fit on a page or less.
Carmichael puts the book’s pieces in chronological order for readers, and uses a timeline as chapter headings to help orient the stories year by year in the bigger picture of the history of war. Using poetry, prose, and deep fact-filled footnotes, as well as images of WWI-era photos, postcards, and documents, as well as her own photos from the Western Front and those of researchers and guides, she offers a multi-faceted volume rich with the realities of the Great War.
“One of my favourite reads ... An inspirational, innovative work that will resonate with readers across all generations. The clever format makes for a brisk read, yet the poignant imagery compels you to double back to appreciate the complexity,” said Philip Wolf of the Vancouver Island Free Daily.
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[divider height="30" style="default" line="default" themecolor="1"]June 26, 2018
