from Sonnets: * Camille Martin
So in honour of the rapidly-approaching December 21, 2012—of the dreaded cataclysm that Mayan astronomers predicted (unless they just got tired of chiselling)—I’ll be posting poems to while away the countdown to the terrestrial torch. The first poem is below.
And what would 2012 prophesies be without a little shameless commercialism? I’m selling poetry, not opulent underground condos, but then, to paraphrase William Carlos Williams, survivalists die miserably on doomsday for lack of what is found in poems.
The clock is ticking, but you can still get a copy of Sonnets and Looms from the following vendors: Small Press Distribution, Book City in Toronto, Amazon.ca, and Shearsman Books.
Help keep my kitchen, where I’m hunkering down with proper Canadian garrison mentality, stocked with beans and rice during these anti-climactic end times.
From a helicopter at night, an aerial
view of a city. In the dark, gigantic
iron statues loom with an ominous
aura of permanence. The people
who live in the city obsess
about the possibility of doomsday
erupting among their soaring
buildings and effigies. Of the end
they’ve made a fetish, chatting
about it at cocktail parties as if
it were the latest vogue. They believe
that it could happen at any moment,
so they no longer bother
to make their beds in the morning.
-
Blog: Rogue Embryo Topics:Collage, Photography, Poetry Camille Martin’s Author Page
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Praise for Looms
In tightly woven tapestry, Martin's 'backstreet songs' re-invent a music of knowledge that navigates the hucksterism and catastrophe threatening our planet. The movement of her threads is fugue-like, punctuated by oboes and clarinets, mockingbirds and cicadas. Here, in the dream-space of time-lapse film, forms of life and ideas collide and morph, rippling through centuries of human consciousness to unravel as quickly as they ravel. Here, above all, Martin makes it possible to dance among our 'origins in snake oil,' our 'crusades to mirages' and our 'accidental fictions'.
—Meredith QuartermainA dreamscape on the outskirts of town, 'in the badlands of the vernacular,' these hopeful, haunted poems populated by children and prisoners 'hover between' realms domestic and exterior, real and imagined. Like candles described herein, this book gives off a melting, tactile glow.
—Arielle GreenbergThere is such an expansiveness to Martin’s Looms. The poems exist in that magical place where words, images and ideas collide, creating connections that previously had never been.
—rob mclennan[Looms] has a very painterly, noir feel, alienated and penumbral, taut yet expansive. Impressive and addictive.
—Steve Spence for Stride MagazineLooms is a wonderful continuation of Martin's previous collection, Sonnets, in which she explored similar themes as well as playing with the sonnet form. Martin has proven herself to be a solid poet with an ear for language and an inquisitive mind, delving into the big questions we all face. In this collection, Martin has woven a rich tapestry of poems that are well worth perusing.
—Cort Bledsoe for BookslutCamille Martin's Looms, like Penelope's famous twenty-year woven prevarication while Odysseus is out and about, begins each day anew with each poem, each poem begun without fanfare and needing none. . . . I got with the agenda, gloriously so - allowed myself to float, to be shuttled (but not shuttlecocked) from perspective to image and on, each [poem] a frame and yet an embrace, a scene and invitation. I recommend you get hold of Looms.
—Sarah Sarai
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Praise for Sonnets
In these taut, fast-paced, self-aware poems, the lyric meets 21st century paranoia and sparks fly.
—Rae ArmantroutThere is magnificence in these poems, a poetic magnetic, propelling you to turn the page.
—Jordan Scott”Intellectually fearsome and restlessly exploratory . . . rigorous and uncompromising . . . torqued high."
—Marianne Villanueva for Galatea ResurrectsThere’s none of the lyrical self-absorption one finds in too many collections. . . Martin has a very good ear, as in a fun, almost Hopkinsesque piece that flirts with nonsense, but stays syntactically coherent.
—Quill and QuireThere are so few who seem to know how to bring something new to an often-used form that when it happens, it’s worth noting, and such is the case with Camille Martin in Sonnets. Martin writes with the most wonderful sense of clarity, thought and play in these poems.
—rob mclennanSonnets is a delightful body of work. Even though we wander into the oblique there is never alienation. Incredible poetic craft.
—James Mc Laughlin, Stride MagazineCamille Martin’s poems shimmer with repetition deft as sweetest breath mid-spring.
—Sheila E. MurphyCan you pour new wine into old bottles? Well, if you are Camille Martin and the bottles are sonnets, the answer is an emphatic, "Yes."
—Carol Dorf, New Pages Book Reviews
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Praise for Codes of Public Sleep
Codes of Public Sleep breaks open the code of private thought to modes of knowing catastrophe that defy insufficient isolating sagas. Camille Martin's poetry is the shattering signal from a laudably wild tongue that will not keep still for our death-drive culture. This is a remarkable collection.
—Carla Harryman
Rogue Embryo- “At first I was adrift . . .”: Camille Martin’s LOOMS
- Minimalist poems in the new Otoliths
- Photos: Adam Seelig, Jim Johnstone, and Camille Martin at the Art Bar (host: Josh Smith)
- Jim Johnstone | Adam Seelig | Camille Martin at the Art Bar (Toronto), Tuesday, April 9
- Photos: Oana Avasilichioaei and Camille Martin at Argo Bookshop, Montreal (Bonus: Zen Snowcat)
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I’ve enjoyed these — we’re all afraid of the end of the world; why not connect your poems to a particular date.
Glad you liked the poems. And you’re right, of course. From now on, I’m going to expect certainty from my poems. Start pinning down some dates and times. The little suckers need to start working for a living.