Coffin Maker

This recently published book in Canada contains a poem devoted to Emily Brontë:

Where Genesis Begins
Poet: Tom Dawe
Artist: Gerald Squires
Break Water Books
Softcover
ISBN (10) 1-55081-261-0
ISBN (13) 978-155081-261-9
Hardcover (with audio cd)
ISBN (10) 1-55081-266-1
ISBN (13) 978-155081-266-4

Where Genesis Begins is a collaboration of two of Newfoundland’s foremost artists: Tom Dawe, a profoundly visual poet, and Gerald Squires, a profoundly poetic painter. The book contains thirty-seven poems by Dawe, twenty-nine of which have not been published before, and seventy-one artworks by Squires.
The book opens with an essay by Martina Seifert of Queen’s University in Belfast and closes with an afterword by poet, novelist, and essayist Stan Dragland of Newfoundland.
The hardcover edition comes with an audio cd of Tom Dawe reading all of the poems that appear in Where Genesis Begins.

The Chronicle Herald gives more details:

Where Genesis Begins is an evocative title for a beautiful collaboration between two wonderful Newfoundland artists, the poet Tom Dawe and the painter Gerald Squires. This beautiful volume — with lovely art reproductions — is a seamless collaboration and although the book emphasizes that Dawe did not write these poems in response to Squires’ art, and vice-versa, the words and pictures work so well together that you would be forgiven for having thought that this is how the book began. (...)
There are 37 poems (29 have not been published before), and 71 works of art.
In the foreword, Martina Seifert of Queen’s University in Belfast, writes that there are "innumerable points of kinship between the two artists . . . physicality, earthiness, and clarity of their art" among them.
The clarity of Dawe’s poems, particularly his poems about women, is very affecting. Here, Bess and Coffin Maker are among the strongest, evoking, as only fine poetry can, strong and lasting images.
Bess is a woman alternately described as "the one cast out", "village whore" and "outport exile" (among other names), while Emily Bronte, the object of the coffin maker’s skill is "the odd one", "the one that got away". (Sharon Hunt)

Categories: Books, Poetry