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NEW BOOKS
French Seams
French Seams is the latest in a series of sewn books using poems about sewing as text. So far, there are five books with text by Lorna Crozier (see Button, Zipper, Needle, Ironing Board and Scissors on the LIST-sewing page,) four with poems by Hazel Hall (see Counterpanes, Heavy Threads, Mending, and Two Sewing,) one with a poem by Terry Ann Carter (see Zipper: A Suite,) one by Alexandra Cussons (see Sewing Pattern,) two by Diane Dawber (see Grandmother and Aunt,) one by Bronwen Wallace (see Like the Petit Point,) one by Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson (see I Sit and Sew) and one by Cindy Veach (see On the Grain).
Cindy Veach's poem comes from "Gloved Against Blood," published by CavanKerry Press in 2017. The poignant story about failure appealed to me. French Seams compares perfect, neat French Seams, with no raw edges, to a perfect marriage, but both the marriages and the seams disintegrate. Bright yellow fabric with perfect seams morphs into faded, dirty fabric with ragged seams, sewn in the wrong colour.
See the LIST page, for more information. Click on the Poems about Sewing button.
The poem is used with the permission of Cindy Veach and CavanKerry Press.
2026, Kingston. (14.5 x 13 x 1" ) Edition of 4. $800
Crochet
I found April Dolan's poem online, on Hello + Poetry. This sad little tale is also about failure. The crocheted hexagons start out irregular (some of them are actually pentagons) with odd colours and missed stitches. By the end, the white, salmon, pale blue and yellowy-green hexagons are perfect, echoing the poet's goal of success.
See the LIST page, for more information. Click on the Poems about Sewing button.
The poem is used with the permission of April Dolan.
2025, Kingston. (13 x 14 x 1.5" ) Eccentric edition of 6. $800
The Knitters
I found P.K. Page's poem in one of my mother's books of poetry from the 1970s entitled Poems Selected and New, published by House of Anansi Press. The description of knitters was so intriguing, I just had to play with it. Page was not only an acclaimed Canadian poet, but a novelist, playwright, essayist, journalist and visual artist (as P.K. Irwin.) “Page is an almost entirely visual poet,” writes Canadian Literature essayist Rosemary Sullivan, although that abundance of visual images also brought negative criticism. "Each of Miss Page's stanzas is so crowded with new and exciting pictures, that ...[each] seems...to require the attention of a whole poem," John Sutherland commented in Northern Review.
See the LIST page, for more information. Click on the Poems about Sewing button.
Her poem is used with the permission of The Estate of P.K. Page [1974.]
2025, Kingston. (7 x 7 x 7" when closed. Opens t0 3' x 4'. ) Eccentric edition of 10. $1000
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