GUAM AND OTHER ISLANDS: A MISCELLANY (2024)

Available at Lulu.com.

Guam and Other Islands: A Miscellany explores the uniqueness of island life. As a visitor or transplanted outsider, a mainlander knows they are moving to a different rhythm, something intangible, especially when the culture is new to them.

The book is a compilation of writings and woodcuts centered on island as metaphor, and the position of the traveler/outsider. There is no desire to make this chapbook carry more weight than it can, but it’s obvious the concept of “island” is loaded with metaphorical content.

A Note on the Woodcut Prints: The woodcuts are drawn from photographs that I have taken while traveling. When considering the islands of the Pacific especially, I realized the woodcut art form in its most rudimentary black and white expression reminds me of some island artwork.

Reducing the photograph detail also gives me a result that in some ways resembles the negatives we commonly used to record our life stories before modern technology. It was always a bit of a mystery to decipher them as we held them up to the light, squinting to read in reverse.

These factors permit me to keep the unsaid/unseen hovering in the background, a presence that suggests the viewer/reader participates in creating meaning. What we presume to know is transitory, and always only partly expressed.

GUAM AND OTHER ISLANDS: A MISCELLANY is available in print at Lulu.com.