Thursday, December 2, 2010

Beach Cardiology by Franci Louann

Lipstick Press is pleased to announce Franci Louann's first chapbook, Beach Cardiology, a collection of poems covering five decades and four continents.

The title refers to the dreams and hopes that expire unrequited, and turn to stone on a beach somewhere.

The first stanza of the eponymous piece, which appears on the back of the cover:
all of the stones
on this beach
are shaped
like hearts
appears at first, to be optimistic, hopeful, as though everything on the beach where land ends and the ocean begins, is in tune with the human heart. However the final stanza reveals the fear that follows hope.

The heart sees signs in everything. The  poem titled "That Night" is about openings in images and relationships when Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party comes to town, foreshadowing the meeting of a new love.

In these poems, inanimate objects predict what the mind doesn't want to allow. The backpack foretells the end of an affair, the half moon announces the ache for the missing half, a Palestinian scarf becomes a flag when a rabbi and his family walk by.

Franci Louann was born in Stratford, Ontario, (known then as Frances Louann Workman) and moved to the West Coast in the late sixties. Her poems have appeared in Woman’s Eye: 12 BC Poets (edited by Dorothy Livesay, Vancouver: Air, 1974), various other publications, in print and online, and have won prizes from Pandora’s Collective, Burnaby Writers’ Society, and the Vancouver Folk Music Festival 25th Anniversary Memorable Moments contest. In 2007, she received World Poetry’s Volunteer Media Award, and was appointed World Poetry Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand 2009-2010.

Lipstick Press
767 Chelwood Road, RR #1
Gabriola BC V0R 1X1

lipstickpress@shaw.ca
http://www.lipstickpress.com/

ISBN: 978-0-9781204-8-1

Cover photo © 2010 Franci Louann
24 pages

$8 plus shipping
To order send an email to lipstickpress@shaw.ca

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I remember those beach stone poems---good to hear the book is out now

Sho said...

that comment wasn't supposed to be anon.---that would be so bland
it was supposed to say essarray
signing up for your fan band

Anonymous said...

Sho (I tried to reply some time ago - you were quick...)

Mary Bennett deserves credit for telling me, about that Beach Heart Stone poem...'for me the poem finishes here'...

Don't you love short poems? There is one more stanza in the book.

Franci said...

Well darn now I went anon. too...unintentionally...

Deanna said...

Terrific Franci ... the heart has so much to tell.

Franci said...

the beaches...seem to listen...

Lipstick Press is not publishing books now

Dear Poets Sorry to let you know we have not been publishing chapbooks since 2010. We did some online publishing - mainly for social iss...