This is the third post in a series sharing a few of my poetry book boxes. I started making these when I was a broke student and couldn't afford to buy Christmas presents for anyone. And then I got addicted.
The Prada Book Box was number 10, created as an engagement present for two dear friends who kindly loaned it back to me later for a couple of exhibitions. This is another accordion book with collage, ink, and two poems, Exchange and Staying Here, both of which ended up in my book Bullet Hole Riddle a few years later.
All the materials I use to make book boxes are recycled from somewhere. The box used in this one was given to me by another dear friend and fellow poet, Michelle Bolton Durey, who introduced me to the wonders of collage, and tragically took her life in 2016. This adds another layer of meaning to this work for me. Certainly she stays with me through my continued engagement in the art-form she loved. The first book box I ever made was for Michelle, a bit of reciprocity for a woman who used to turn up on my doorstep with a handmade gift whenever something important happened. She wasn't a broke student though. She just understood that spending time was more special than spending money.
Staying here
We give up little bits of life
every moment.
They are nothing to us.
This morning
all the hydrangeas were heavy with rain
and that was the state of the world.
One small beauty
nature bearing under nature.
The air moves
through us.
We are 75% water
in our warm bodies
nature leaning on nature.
This is the way
we stay in the world.
Being little meditations
we take pieces of each other
wherever we go.
And the other side...
Exchange.
We carry these little histories
like so many houses.
All these different doors we find
to hide behind/to walk through/
leave open/to close.
Bartering our existence
we exchange small pieces of ourselves
until the lines blur.
We are not stand-alone objects.
We are looking at ourselves
through each other’s eyes.
Two people in the dark
showing each other where the edges are.
A series of living prints
we construct each other
and we construct ourselves.
I have someone else’s dreams sometimes:
we are painting our insides golden.
[Photos by Erin Jensen]