Mini Chapbooks Bundle
Yavanika Press, 2023.
Yavanika Press is a digital publisher of poetry and short prose chapbooks, with an aesthetic that leans towards Japanese short forms.
In a Tell Tell Poetry interview, Yavanika’s founding editor Shloka Shankar says:
“We love a well-crafted poem with strong imagery. And we want them short. . . We are drawn to poems that transform the everyday or the mundane into something fresh.”
Curious to explore these short form poems, I decided to download the 2023 mini chapbooks bundle from Yavanika:
- Desire and Despair by Alison Jennings
- anemones by C. X. Turner
- Plug in the Mountain by Seth Copeland
Desire and Despair explores human connection and invites the reader to take in different writing styles through eloquent homages to visionary poets like Emily Dickinson and Audre Lorde. Jennings is a Seattle-based poet with over 75 credits in international literary journals.
anemones, which features the poet’s vibrant cover and interior art, is a meditative and lyrical mini collection. A key feature that pulsates throughout the micropoetry is the concept of ma, a Japanese concept that refers to the “space between.” C. X. Turner is a social worker and describes herself as an observer of life.
Plug in the Mountain explores the breadth and depth of structures in the Wichita Mountains through fragments of visual poems. The poems were inspired by photographs taken by the poet in the region. Seth Copeland was born in Oklahoma and has a varied range of literary interests.
In Desire and Despair, the reader quickly encounters an homage to Emily Dickinson in the poem “We Turn.” It features the line:
Within is solitude and space, that precious polar privacy.
In “Love on an Index Card,” we catch a glimpse of a relationship that’s forged on compatibility. I connected with many of the themes of shared connection in Jennings’s poems, which cover complex ground in situations one could find anywhere or everywhere.
anemones opens with the monostich:
redbud winter facing the mist
The poet follows this closely with a line about “unpacking my sky’s rain,” and another separate line about “spring snow flowering from my wounded heart anemones.” Anemones are perennials, and I gained a strong sense of renewal and the eternal in this minimalist collection.
In comparison, the third mini chapbook in this bundle, Plug in the Mountain, has a more explosive opening:
Slaughtered blue over gray mountain manes,
canyon echoes, a valley of splinters gone,crumbling to a trillionth of dust.
The reader is treated to lush visuals like a “bison-eyed onyx a century of caves” with an intriguing bone-related shape poem towards the end.
These are mini collections of approximately ten poems each, which offer a fantastic way to quickly—and deeply—sample fresh writing from poets committed to the craft of Japanese short forms.
One of Jennings’ poems in Desire and Despair ends with the line “So peaceful, unafraid.” It happens to be an apt description of how traversing through this bundle made me feel.
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Jess Chua is a poet and award-winning essayist. Her creative writing is forthcoming or has appeared in 34th Parallel Magazine, Musepaper and Mystery Tribune. Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from a small press.