Bough Down

Bough Down

by Karen Green

Both an evocation of her love for her husband and an act of defiance in the face of devastating loss, Karen Green’s Bough Down is a book of dualities, probing the small spaces between lucidity and madness, desire and ambivalence, the living and the absent. In counterpoint, tiny visual collages punctuate the text, made of salvaged language and scraps of the material world. Made not to illustrate the words but as a parallel process of invocation and erasure, pilfering and remaking, each collage—and the creative act of making it—evinces the reassembling of life. The book won the 2013 Believer Poetry Award.

Ariane Fairlie reviewed the book in Kolaj #7.

Fairlie wrote in her review:

“The collages themselves are very small, and require the reader to focus in on them with the same concentration required for the poetry. Her artwork is subtle and concise, sometimes complementing her poetry and sometimes expressing a distinct moment or thought. The blank page becomes a point of interest, providing moments of contemplation in between intense emotions.”

See more of this review.

PURCHASE KOLAJ #7

ABOUT THE BOOK
Bough Down
by Karen Green
7.75”x5.75”, 188 pages
56 colour illustrations, hard cover
ISBN: 978-1-938221-01-9
$36.00 USD
Siglio, Catskill, New York, 2013

PURCHASE THIS BOOK