Water shapes us.
Available now from Bracket Books Ireland at outlets like FabHappy or WalkingCommentary.
Gas, liquid or solid.
Cloud, river or glacier.
Solvent, condensate or biome.
Boil, steam or poach.
Drink, waste or storm.
Glide, swim or ski.
Wash, immerse or bless.
Tasteless, odourless and colourless.
Evaporation, precipitation and runoff.
Are we water?
Safe, sufficient but vulnerable.
The Bracket Books chapbooks are available for online purchase through FabHappy but perhaps you’d prefer to enquire here. They’re published each calendar month, each copy uniquely numbered and posted at the end of each month. Prices include packaging, delivery, all currency and inflation risks.
2023 SUBSCRIPTIONS
One calendar year (12 issues):
Republic of Ireland: €135
Rest of World: €145 / UK£125 / US$145
Watershapes: the cover shows icicles in Iceland hanging over the mid -Atlantic ridge that pushes Europe further from America. The book opens to extreme Winter weather at the Powerscourt Waterfall which faces Killiney Summer firefighting beside our home and turns on to New Zealand’s Fox glacier in Spring across from trout fishing in Utah in Autumn.
Elsewhere there’s shutterspeed-frozen rain, a dusting of snow on bronze birds and a coating of hailstones, all three found on our back deck. The double glazing on the door to that back deck often takes on dewy patterns that amuse us but make us question the effectiveness of the new insulation.
Walking through coastal Bray, I encountered a man steam-cleaning a pub courtyard. Another day, another walk, another country, I noticed a soup seller in Bath, his customers’ breath steaming before eating the steaming soup.
There’s falling water frozen with a strobelight and a very long exposure yet opposite is a rising water feature frozen with a tiny exposure time. Both are artworks, the first an ephemeral installation, the second a more permanent public fountain, each duration an inversion of the exposure time.
Droplets on hydrophobic umbrellas at the World Heritage Kinkaku-ji temple in Kyoto contrast with thunderclouds over Dublin.
Waves breaking off the Coromandel in New Zealand seen from a lateral perspective compare with roiling waves seen from atop cliffs on the Greater Saltee Island.
(Wo)man made the London aquarium that exhibits jellyfish (among other seawater captives) and different hands made the nightlit falls that decorate The Bellagio Hotel located in Paradise, Las Vegas.
There’s a young surfer waiting in seemingly opaque water in Donegal while another Donegal picture shows just how clear the water is at Stacamore Pier on Inishowen.
A rainbow appeared to erupt from a passing bus in Ballsbridge and I just happened to be carrying a camera. I shot the back-cover partial eclipse from inside the Lexicon library during a meeting about creating creative spaces for creatives in Rathdown Dun Laoghaire. I knew both were happening simultaneously and went prepared.
I think my favourite is the apparently contoured, serially frozen rime on the edge of a stream that drains into the Boyne at Tullyallen near Oldbridge, the site of the Battle of the Boyne, a fight involving 60,000 people (or was it just two?) that changed Ireland, Britain and Europe forever. I took this on December 15th while scouting opportunities for a completely different chapbook that I’m hoping to do soon.
Leave a Reply