Incidents of Travel

JEREMY CLARKE

2012

POETRY
ISBN 978-0-9552904-2-8 (chapbook)

5⅛" × 9⅛", 24 pp.
Limited edition of 125 numbered copies

CA$25


Incidents of Travel is a sequence of devotional poems about love won and lost, with photographs by the poet interspersed throughout. The cover is letterpress printed on Pearl Grey handmade paper, and the interior photographs and text are printed offset on bright white paper, with a small leaf motif hand-tinted. Hand-sewn with black thread in a limited edition of 125.


These are beautiful pages; treasures. Emily Young

¶ It's not fashionable to talk about "taste" or "decorum" in art any more, but, in the handling of an enormously personal subject matter in Incidents of Travel, the poet definitely seems to be exercising fine taste. Both the work and the emotional self-mastery this suggests is admirable; certainly in contrast to the more openly "confessional" art of our age. The force of "Train" is particularly striking, the decision to centre the lines of only this poem works to unnerve the reader. It confirms what the bullet imagery says: something is wrong here, literally out of kilter. And so, as with the initial meeting and the subsequent consummation, we are allowed but a glimpse of a narrative milepost, via oblique expression. The use throughout the sequence of shadows and odd angles, as it were, is powerful; in filmic terms, almost Hitchcockian (and, like him, dark). Tom Adair

In Jeremy Clarke's own words...

¶ I'm not sure where my sense of "obligation" to write comes from. Finding a reason for a particular compulsion is never straightforward. I believe that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. It's enough to simply know that. And anyway, that's the easy bit. The consequent courage, commitment and sacrifice required are what makes it tricky... What makes it worth it? Finding that something you have done has been a blessing. In whatever way or ways. — THE CHURCH TIMES


Jeremy Clarke was born in Bedfordshire, England and has lived and worked in Canada, America, Europe, the Arctic and the Middle East. He currently lives in London.

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