Jan Steckel's Blog: Horizontal Poet Sings Bidyke Blues - Posts Tagged "alchemy"

Gnomic, luminous and witty, Marie Lecrivain's new poetry book The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre is an unusually unified work based on the author’s experience of self-transformation. Lecrivain masterfully employs the language of alchemy to explore in various poetic forms the evolution of the self and the cosmos. Ablett’s cover illustration paired with Lecrivain’s photographs burnish the lambent text.

Don't just take my word for it, though. Take those of poet Gillian Prew, author of A Wound's Sound, In the Broken Things, Throats Full of Graves, and Disconnections:

“There has always been a broad awareness in alchemy that tended to view the lab work as a metaphor for the subtle body and, more purely, the spirit - hence the natural similarities between alchemy and poetry. And, indeed, alchemical poetry is not new. John Donne used many alchemical and scientific images and references in his work. Although the original object of alchemy was to produce gold from base metals, the discipline was later spiritualized to that of becoming transformed oneself by the processes which were developed in the laboratory for transmuting elements. Like Blake, Lecrivain’s poems use the symbols of alchemy to point to the breaking down of destructive systems and opening the way to transformation to the new age (Solvé et Coagula).”

You can buy a signed copy of the the book directly from the author via the exquisite indie publisher Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, or you can purchase one on Amazon.

Marie Lecrivain is the editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, a photographer, and a writer-in-residence at her apartment. Her work has appeared in various journals, including Edgar Allen Poet Journal, Maitenant, A New Ulster, Spillway, The Los Angeles Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and others. She’s the author of The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre (© 2014 Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House), Love Poems…Yes… REALLY… Love Poems (© 2013 Sybaritic Press), and she’s the editor of the anthology Near Kin: Words and Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (© 2014 Sybaritic Press). Her avocations include alchemy, alternate modes of transportation, H.P. Lovecraft, Vincent Price, steampunk accessories, and the letter “S."



If you live in Southern California in the U.S.A. and want to meet this remarkable woman, you can hear her read from her new book at any of the following readings in the Los Angeles area:

6/21/14, 3 P.M., as part of the Three Rooms Press Maitenant launch

6/28/14, 3 P.M., at the Open Mic at the Encino Library

8/30/14, 3 P.M., at the Santa Catalina Library in Pasadena

9/28/14, 3 P.M., at Beyond Baroque in Venice at Wyatt Underwood's Nebraska Girls Reading