The poet Carin Perron (1957-2003) was a crafts-person of poetry and often spent many years to perfect a poem. Published in such prestigious journals such as Ariel: A Review of International English literature, she made history by winning first place in the Bournemouth International Festival poetry competition after placing third in the two previous years. She had entered the competition only those three times. To mark the event, the three prominent judges of those years gave her an additional prize of signed copies of one of their books. Her poem Anne (For Anne Morrow Lindbergh) was read to its subject on her deathbed in 2001 by a friend. It was one of the poems which had won a prize at the Bournemouth Festival.
More than a complete collection of poems, Carin includes many notes on her works including the stories behind the poems and even a short instructional essay on the very difficult poet form: the sestina. The rhyming example, The Room, was the poem published in Ariel. She always wanted to change people's perception of poetry and how it was taught. Many of the poems have not been previously published and she worked on the manuscript for this book entirely during her three-year chemo-therapy treatments for terminal breast cancer.
A true "Renaissance Woman", at that same time, she worked on designing and building the "Celtic Coin Index Online" for Oxford University: a database of more than 28,000 ancient British Celtic coins and, as a portrait artist, had started a project of painting several copies on Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". Her two cancer poems present opposing views of the disease: one poignant; the other heart-warming.
As her husband of nineteen years, I promised that I would see her work through to publication but it has taken many years for me to feel up to this task and for that I must apologize to those who have waited long to see this book. I have also included additional annotations on several poems. The structure and section titles are as she had planned although I have included an additional poem that had never made it to the manuscript having been written not long before her death. I have also changed the order of two of the last three poems reserving the final place for the poem, Domestic Epiphanies about our family life at home which she had me read at her memorial service. The collection includes both structured and free verse forms and includes several poem cycles. Much of her work owes something to French poetic forms. I have included, as an appendix, her last autobiography.
My next e-book will be a reworking of two of my blog series: "Dean Crawford: Living among the Dobunni" and "In praise of metal-detecting". It will appear shortly. The following e-book project: "Jungian Archaeology" will take much more time to complete. I have published five e-books in the last ten months. This last one will soon show up on my Amazon Author Page:
https://www.amazon.com/author/john_hooker
John's Coydog Community page
Hello John:
ReplyDeleteI guess the road to publication was an especially tough one; strewn with memories and reminders of good times past.
Sincere best wishes
John Howland
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteYes, like stepping into a time machine.
Best,
John
Hello John,
ReplyDeleteYou are very courageous. How can I obtain the book? I am not a Kindler.
Kathy
Hi Kathy,
DeleteThanks! Obtaining the book is very easy as there is an Amazon free app for reading Kindle books on your tablet, phone or desktop computer:
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/fd/kcp
Of those three choices, the tablet and the phone are the best as you can enlarge the pictures with great resolution (I made the images for the Gundestrup cauldron series really huge so you can zoom in to the fine details). Some Kindle stand-alone devices, unlike the apps, do not show colour. On the tablet, you just double tap the image to be able to then stretch it with forefinger and thumb. For reasons perhaps only known to Amazon, the app for a desktop computer does not allow that feature. On the other hand, highlighting and pasting is always easier on a desktop computer. Amazon includes the full reference with that so you get name, title, and Kindle location of the passage. This is great for quoting things in books or papers. If you have a tablet, phone and a desktop computer all of your books can be synced across all your devices with WiFi, or through Amazon (they will also upload things to the Cloud).
I am a great believer in e-books: you can take a huge library with you anywhere and it is far easier to get people to help you move when your library is not in 50 heavy boxes;-). E-books are also cheaper than hard copies, but just make sure you look at the previews first or download the free sample as some books are in fixed format like a PDF. They are really annoying to use, especially when in fixed double columns.
Best,
John