“By turns prophetic, polemical, sensual, and humorous…”
—JOHN DANIEL,
author of The Far Corner and Of Earth: Poems
—JOHN DANIEL,
author of The Far Corner and Of Earth: Poems
Distributed through Ingram. Also available online through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. |
Digital Art, Poetry & Prose
by David Memott
Forthcoming in 2020
This oversized artbook includes sixty to eighty full-color plates in seven sections—reproductions of digital art from Memmott's Shapeshifter's Ink. Accompanying the art in each section is an essay, two poems and a segment of a retrospective interview with La Grande saxophonist Greg Johnson. The interview is wide-ranging and discusses Memmott's practice of poetry, the creative process, the writing life, the role of community and the work of independent publishing in eastern Oregon. From the author's introduction: "Like the meandering river in the Grande Ronde where I live, my literary and artistic energies after getting an English/Writing degree at Eastern Oregon University took nearly a lifetime to establish a channel; the soil is that deep here. Good fortune brought me into the valley; choice has kept me here. I made the choice not to give up career for place, but rather redefine what “career” meant. Gary Snyder in The Real Work says “The exploration of consciousness itself and the unfolding recognition of the same principles that are operating around us is the most beautiful of possible human experiences.”(1) That’s a reasonable place to start, I thought. We are prospectors looking for gold. I could relate to that. It was only a question of where to find the gold... what I saw reflected in poems, music, art and photography regional influences—rivers, rocks, grasses, wildlife, textures, light and form—transformed with time and experience as a continued presence who belonged to a place. "These transformations are cyclical progressions that don't necessarily lead anywhere but remain in the same place, but my awareness has deepended with a renewed energy to seek new perspectives. Eastern Oregon has been a sacred and profane space feeding my imagination and sustaining my practice. As the Irish Catholic priest and poet John O’Donohue says, 'Imagination is the reverent mirror of the inner world' and as George Venn says, 'A region is a microcosm—a magic circle centered on home.' "A sense of belonging informs the practice and swings the meaning from literal to figurative, from realism to abstraction, from sound to sense, in a braided stream winding through a fertile valley, down rocky canyons, speaking out of its mouth in an ancient language. Lived life in any region is the solid ground running through the darkest night; home is the liquid fire in the heart, the breakouts of breathless energy spilling over banks, ridges and rimrocks in light waves that ripple majestically like a living pulse through the whole galaxy." David Memmott's sense of place extends from his piece of ground in northeastern Oregon to the space-time continuum of the universe itself. By turns prophetic, polemical, sensual, and humorous, [he speaks] in stalwart witness to the outer and inner landscapes that he calls home."
—John Daniel, author of The Far Corner and Of Earth: Poems |
