September 2009
Patrick M. Pilarski
ISBN 978-1-926655-02-4
4.25 by 5 inches
Scarlet fly sheets
104 pages $16.95

Leaf Press
P.O. Box 416
Lantzville, B.C. V0R 2H0
(250) 390-3028

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www.leafpress.ca     
orders [at] leafpress.ca
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Author Contact Links:

www.pilarski.ca
desk [at] dailyhaiku.org

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Net 30 days.
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Huge Blue
western canadian travel sketches

Patrick M. Pilarski

Leaf Press is thrilled to announce publication
of Patrick M. Pilarski's first full-length collection of poetry.

"Patrick Pilarski's spare poems shape a pointillist map of the west, placing dot by dot exactly on the large canvas of place and emotion. His poems locate 'the quiet point a hook can never reach' with lyric exactness and flashes of sly fun."
                                                      - Alice Major

A collection of contemporary haiku, tanka, haibun, tanka prose, senryu, and quatrains, Huge Blue is a poetic tour guide to Canada's stunning western landscape. Huge Blue bridges contrasting physical landscapes with recurring characters and images—crows, moments, light and sky. These lead the reader through each different environment, presenting snapshots of rich diversity while at the same time connecting to a unified progression of time and place. Using precise and direct language, the poems in Huge Blue form junction points between humanity and wilderness under a vaulting expanse of sky. Poems in the book are divided into three sections: Prairie, Mountain, and Coast.

Patrick M. Pilarski is the co-editor of DailyHaiku, an Edmonton-based international journal of English-language haiku, and poetry editor for its new sister publication DailyHaiga. Patrick's work has appeared in journals and anthologies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and he is the author of one chapbook of experimental haiku and haibun: Five Weeks.

Click to download high res and colour photographs
Backgrounder

About the Author: Patrick M. Pilarski's recent publication credits include The Antigonish Review, Carousel, filling Station, Frogpond, Literary Review of Canada, Modern Haiku, The New Quarterly, PRISM international, and Vallum. Patrick's poetry has also been released on audio CD, and broadcast on CBC Radio One as part of the CBC Poetry Face-off. While writing Huge Blue, Patrick was working toward his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta, studying the use of computer intelligence and machine vision for rapid cancer testing. He holds a BASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. Patrick lives in Edmonton with his partner, poet Nicole Pakan. More information and high-resolution author photos can be found online at: http://www.pilarski.ca/.

About the Poetry: A short description of some of the poetic forms used in Huge Blue is included below. More detail on Japanese forms can be found in the definitions published by the Haiku Society of America: http://www.hsa-haiku.org/archives/HSA_Definitions_2004.html.

HAIKU: short poems usually spanning one to three lines and less than seventeen syllables in length. Intended to clearly convey a moment experienced by the poet (typically nature-related). Contrary to popular belief, the majority of published English-language haiku do not conform to a 5-7-5 syllabic structure; many modern writers, critics, and editors regard the 5-7-5 form as unnecessarily verbose.

SENRYU: structurally similar to haiku, but usually deal with aspects of human life and relationships as opposed to nature; often satirical or comedic in tone.

HAIBUN: a combination of haiku/senryu and prose, usually narrative or personal in nature; first made famous by the travel writing of Matsuo Basho (1644-94).

TANKA: five-line lyric poems, based on the ancient Japanese poetry genre waka.

TANKA PROSE: similar to haibun, combines tanka and prose for lyric effect; while Japanese tanka prose has existed for over a thousand years, English-language tanka prose only began to appear in the mid-1980s.

About the Publisher: Leaf Press is an independent press located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Leaf's mission is to publish beautifully designed poetry books from both new and experienced poets. Other 2009 titles include: Guatemala: Let Beauty Be by Kit Pepper, Obituary of Light: the Sangan River Meditations by Susan Musgrave, and Precipitous Signs: a Rain Journal by Leanne Boschman.

Ursula Vaira, Publisher, Leaf Press
Box 416, Lantzville, BC, V0R 2H0
ursulavaira@leafpress.ca
www.leafpress.ca
(250) 390-3028