I’m glad to announce that my long-awaited poetry collection Beneath the Surface is finally out and ready for pre-orders on Amazon!
Having said that, let’s talk a bit about the collection itself.
from ‘Stopping Time’
We’re waiting by the roadside.
What for?
To be ticked off,
Ground and minced,
A pile of drying meat
Left to rot and repel
Everyone but hungry worms
Obese, rolling heavily
Yet still famished for flesh.
Is it worth the wait, I ask.
My poetry revolves around the secrets, weaknesses, and monsters that creep beneath the surface of the everyday existence – those nightmarish eyes that glint in the darkness behind each smile, each long gaze into the distance, each daydream. Through three separate sections titled ‘Kraken’s Lair,’ ‘Within the Tentacles’ Reach,’ and ‘Staying Afloat’ the collection takes you down an emotional, winding path into the past and on a journey from childhood to womanhood, through love and war, whilst contemplating the issue of ageing and merciless passage of time. The journey begins in the Kraken’s Lair, where we ponder death, war, loneliness, fear, and nightmares. Then, we move towards the surface, away from the reach of the tentacles and towards those images and ideas that cast a bright light onto our existence. Finally, in the third section, we reflect on the things, people, memories, that keep us afloat and make life beautiful.
This journey actually started more than a year ago when I gathered a pile of papers that contained my poems and ramblings and decided to ‘polish them off’ i.e. rewrite them and mould them into a satisfying form. Then I decided that I wanted some of my poems to contain illustrations that would facilitate understanding and complement the message that I am trying to send. Luckily, I had a designer close at hand and that is how this collaboration with Alen Residovic began. I am certain that Alen will agree that working with me wasn’t an easy feat. I believe in the subjectivity of poetry and that there is not one picture that could truthfully represent what happens in the mind of a reader as she immerses herself in these verses. I pushed and nagged, I didn’t want my illustrations to be cute or pretty, because that is not how I see the world, my lenses are a bit smudged and rough around the edges and that’s what I wanted from Alen’s drawings. I wanted monsters, and my monsters are manifold: Time, People, Distance, Silence, they are all monsters embodied in my Kraken that lurks beneath the surface.
I hope you have an enjoyable read!
⠀
Erna Grcic 