Those of you who have known me for some time know that I am good friends with Laura Ann Reed, a poet from the USA.

We regularly work together, inspiring each other: writing poetry to accompany a work of art, or creating a work of art to accompany a poem...

We share another interest: the works of Franz Kafka. Her second collection of poetry is a homage to Kafka and will be published in mid-July (see the description below the image).

Pre-orders are now being accepted via the publisher's website (with a discount), but unfortunately only for those living in the USA.

So if you live there and are interested, order your copy via this link: Homage To Kafka

Description below the image

Homage to Kafka

by Laura Ann Reed

" In contradistinction to the plethora of critical literature that analyzes the oeuvre of Franz Kafka, the poems in this chapbook echo and mirror Kafka’s own artist process by which his detached visual descriptions create a sense of the anonymity and alienation of the modern experience.

The individuals in Kafka’s novels and stories often become mired in or barred from their surroundings, or topographies while trying to resolve their conflicts.  The visual descriptions of topography are as integral to the story as are character and plot twists. Hence, the poems in Homage To Kafka employ metaphor, metonymy, cadence, image, assonance, and dissonance to portray the topographical textures in which the characters struggle to achieve both personal freedom and connection to the social order.

The poems have been paired with paintings by Paul Klee for the reason that there are strong artistic congruences between the two men. Whereas both Kafka and Klee have been misconstrued and mislabeled as “fantastical”—meaning portraying as real what does not, in reality, exist—nothing could be more erroneous. In fact both artists intuited certain very real, if disquieting, contradictions, anxieties, and ambiguities in modern life.  Including the oscillating processes of emancipation and isolation, as well as estrangement and connection that exist under the benign surface of society.

Unlike the critical literature about Franz Kafka, this chapbook is art in conversation with art. "