Shechem Press is a non-profit, grassroots organization dedicated to advancing the work of poets, playwrights, artists, and thinkers.
Today and always, we celebrate the life and work of our friend and poet Saara Myrene Raappana.
"…When the Niagara Gorge calls, / chant this until its voice drowns: All rivers / were clouds once. All clouds ache to be rivers."
..from "Advice for Icarus from Celebrated Funambulist the Great Farini"
Happy New Year everyone. Here is a new work of fiction, featuring the watercolors of Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton. Enjoy these worlds.
While looking out over the sea, I saw a woman swimming...
Happy Valentines Day! Order your copy of CLIMBING EROS, a new artist book by Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton and Damon Falke, featuring paintings made of foraged inks alongside a braided set of poems exploring Jean-Luc Marion's notion that “Loving requires distance and the crossing of distance." Available now at https://www.nearwaterpress.com/climbing-eros/
Announcing a new artist book, CLIMBING EROS, available February 14 from our friends at Near Water Press! Pre-order your copy today: https://www.nearwaterpress.com/climbing-eros/
CLIMBING EROS features a series of watercolor paintings made of foraged inks by Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton alongside a braided set of poems by Damon Falke – one of confession, one of returning to materiality. The work originated as part of the film of the same title which explores Jean-Luc Marion’s notion that “Loving requires distance and the crossing of distance.”
When October Comes
by Damon Falke
I know all the roads that lead into town,
Even after these years away.
The way I find them here
In the shadows of my old hopes still,
In the unexpected gifts of earlier days,
In the taste of some things left in the air
Where so much has become once.
Once we caught twelve pigmy rattlers
In and around a sandstone butte.
Once we hunted arrowheads with an old woman
Who could name all our mountains.
Once we shared a river camp with an old man
Who came west in a wagon.
I keep them in a loneliness
And in times we could never save.
I look for them in those places
That were never ours alone.
The bowling alley. The dump road. The schools.
Our private lives hid among those open doors.
What will we do, I ask, without knowing
The what or the how anymore.
Maybe this is why I ride in silence now,
During these days and mostly this way
When watching the streetlights flash
As if they could say something else
Of why we come and go, we come and go.
From "Notes on Paper", published in 2011 in hardback with illustrations by Montana artist Laura Mae Jackson. Only a few copies remain. Order yours today: http://www.shechempress.com/catalogue/notes-on-paper
"It is Ray Hodges's first year to help Jim Winters guiding elk hunts. At fourteen, he has a camper and a dog of his own, but many seasons will pass before he can attain Jim's single-minded awareness of the hunt and its demands. Along with lessons about horse-minding and setting camp, Ray is learning to discern the beauty of a land that fosters him and to appreciate the pace of its slow change." Order a copy of Damon Falke's novella "By Way of Passing", now available on our website: http://www.shechempress.com/catalogue/by-way-of-passing
"Now at the Uncertain Hour" is a play by Damon Falke. Originally produced by Square Top Theatre in 2014, the play was written for live performance, online streaming, and broadcast radio. It takes the audience on a journey through the landscape of a soldier’s memory as a collector attempts to make sense of what will be left behind.
The play asks: in the midst of the relentless currents of time, what can we take hold of that will go on, that will not be lost? Photographs, scraps of paper, lights in windows, smells of certain fields ground us in place and time but only to the instant that we are awake to them. Ultimately, the play calls us to look, to listen, to speak, to be creators and caretakers of our stories. Order a copy of the script here: http://www.shechempress.com/catalogue/now-at-the-uncertain-hour
Refractions is a collection of poetry from noted writer & scholar Stephen C. Behrendt. It was released in September 2014. This five part collection includes original woodcut prints from artist, Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton.
“In a world that seems bent on sullying the word, Stephen Behrendt’s poems are unfailingly human. Love, sayeth the mystic, is the means and end of understanding. You find that lens, its refractions, everywhere in this fine collection.” –Robert Gibb, author of The Homestead Trilogy
Order your copy here: http://www.shechempress.com/refractions
"Laura, or Scenes from a Common World", is a 5-part, long poem by Damon Falke. In English & Norwegian, translated by Martin Stray Egeberg. The poem was the basis for Square Top Theatre’s 2016 award winning film of the same title. Order your copy here: http://www.shechempress.com/
In "A Story of America Goes Walking", poet Saara Myrene Raappana and artist Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton wrestle with Henry David Thoreau’s 1862 essay “Walking”, traveling from Thoreau’s New England pond to the forests of the U.S. Midwest and on to the Chinese southwest, exploring the myths of America. Whether told by kids playing make-believe, the map-like curves of the human heart, or women waiting in a hospital room in Chengdu, the only way to figure out which stories are true is to walk through them. Available now on our website: http://www.shechempress.com/catalogue/a-story-of-america-goes-walking
"I wonder if there is an exact moment / When I gave up the idea of permanence."
Square Top Theatre's premiere production of Damon Falke's "The Scent of a Thousand Rains" opened two years ago today in a performance adapted for the stage and directed by Charlie Pepiton. It featured a performance by Ryan Childers and music composed, arranged, and performed by Tana Bachman-Bland. Read the book-length poem by Damon Falke, now available on our website: www.shechempress.com.
"Compounded moments reveal the interconnectedness of life and the effects we have on one another: humans, birds, land, and air. Teasing out those relationships is where the really interesting stuff happens artistically. How do you know when you are overworking the elements or have included too much in the compositional frame?"
Read the new conversation between artist Rebekah Wilkins-Pepiton and writer Damon Falke on the Square Top Theatre page.
Their book BROKEN CYCLES was published in 2007 by Shechem Press. Follow us here for more.
http://www.squaretoptheatre.org/january-12-2021-compounded-moments/
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