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Round won the Best Offset Design award at the annual
Bumbershoot Festival's Book Fair in Seattle, 4-7th September 1998.
The Bumbershoot Festival has been held in Seattle
every year since the late 1960s; it is now the premier event on the
West Coast of North America for new music, film, drama and literature.
About 300,000 people attend.
Authors Slavick and Baker have produced one of the
most beautiful books in the history of literary publishing from Hong
Kong. The poems and photographs in Round form a meandering
circle through Asia, beginning in Hong Kong, going through countries
such as Korea, Japan, Philippines, Burma and India, and ending in
China.
Critics Comments
"Powerful and original. A
book to treasure. A trip through Asia that is a pilgrimage. I enjoyed
the journey very much. Strikingly unusual imagery, sensitive use of
words, moments of thought and, sometimes, what I like most, the
'things in between.'"
Leung Ping-kwan,
poet, critic, Professor of Chinese
at Lingnan University
"Madeleine Marie Slavick and Barbara Baker met three
years ago at one of the rare poetry reading venues in Hong Kong, the
Chinese University. They recognised similarities when they heard each
other read, and have collaborated since on several projects, the
latest being a book of poems and photographs about Asia, titled
Round.
"The authors seek to distil the essence of their
personal experiences of travelling through Asia. In the title poem,
Baker describes her sense of dislocation when travelling in unfamiliar
cultures as 'floating in a vacuum with the sun on top'.
"'People worry they won't understand the poems,'
Baker says. 'To me, the most important thing about poetry is the
words. Readers can share an aesthetic experience of enjoying the words
and it doesn't matter if they don't understand the poem.
"'In poetry, I try to describe the familiar in a new
way, using new images so the reader recognises what's being described
and also gets an added insight.'
"'It's the same with photography. By choosing a
different angle or a close-up of a particular detail, not the obvious
view, you might see the tiny bit that really sums it up.'"
"Most of the photographs in Round are
Slavick's. She has worked as a professional photographer as well as
writing poetry. Much of her photography in the book has the quality of
painting, concentrating on texture, colour and line.
"For those who find poetry difficult, it is possible
to appreciate Round in the same way someone illiterate in
Chinese can still appreciate Chinese painting in which calligraphy is
an important yet additional element.
"The poetry and photography
in Round extend rather than mirror each other."
Jane Camens
South China Morning Post
"Round is an
accomplished and highly enjoyable collection of poems, a voyage of
both geographical and psychological importance.... An excellent book."
Patricia
Beer, poet and literary critic (England)
Readers Comments
Extract
Copyright © Madeleine
Marie Slavick & Barbara Baker
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