INEXTINGUISHABLE the third chapbook by Scottish poet James W Wood

see James W Wood biography

Knucker Press is delighted to publish Inextinguishable, the third chapbook by Scottish poet James W. Wood in collaboration with fourteen young artists from the Edinburgh College of Art (ECA).  These artists respond to Wood's work in a range of styles that match the thematic diversity of Wood's writing, from the morbid realism of Toby Cook's response to 'Down the Drain', through to the witty, Lowryesque figures in Fiona Purves's response to Wood's poem about chance and fate, 'Thirteen'.  Inextinguishable is a 32pp full colour A5 pamphlet.

price £6.00 + p&p

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Reviews

Jon Stone of FuseLit writes:

As with his last collection, The Theory of Everything, Wood's lucidity is one of his greatest strengths. Contemporary poetry is flooded with collections that intellectualise death, seeking new profundity in its wilderness. Wood doesn't pursue the same holy grail; his responses are often surprising in their ordinariness and bitter honesty. Take this from The Craws:

"... You were
no prize-winner, sportsman or great thinker,

just a man like any other; and one
whose life asks us for little grieving."

Matt Merritt, Polyolbion Sunday 31st August 2008

"If you enjoyed James Wood's 2006 HappenStance chapbook The Theory Of Everything half as much as I did, then you're probably not going to take too much convincing to buy this, his latest pamphlet, a handsome full-colour publication matching the response of 13 artists to his poems. So, my apologies if you're already converted, because I'm going to preach to you anyway (something the poems never do, incidentally)."

(you can see the full review at http://polyolbion.blogspot.com

Canadian magazine Eyewear:

'[M]uch of this collection hums with an accomplished and intelligent poetic vision. Here is the close of Wood's remarkable short poem entitled "Thirteen,"

what the foolish
put their hope in, how we are, what we call
the things we feel; the name we give
to all we'll never know: a number—thirteen.

Many poets, I reckon, would long to have such rhythms and to complete a poem with so much generosity and yet also with so much wisdom.'

Sphinx magazine

'Woods’ poems are records of a keen mind in conversation with a warm heart; they are compassionate, graceful, deeply human and usefully thoughtful... Danish Composer Carl Nielsen wanted listeners of his “inextinguishable” Symphony #4, written at the height of World War I, to recognize that “music is life, and like it, inextinguishable.” James W. Wood is just as certain that (even in these desperate times of war) the stumbling awkwardness and strange fragile beauty of the everyday will sustain us; but unlike Nielsen—who uses brassy dissonance and competing percussion to awaken his listeners to the imperative of life and living—Wood gently urges his listeners to notice small details, especially those signposts of memory, planted imperfectly on the border between life and death.'