THE POEMS IN NICKEL ARE the result of a Monday meeting in November of 2021.
“Every Monday, 10am west coast time, 1pm east coast time, our writing group meets online. We have been zooming as a group since the onset of the pandemic. We play what Ruth Stone used to call ‘The Poetry Game.’ Each of us offers up three or four words and one of us, usually me, throws in a phrase. Joe keeps time and we all go away for 45 minutes or so and write, then return and read what we’ve written, discussing each poem among us.
“Inside {the chapbook} you’ll find what we all came up with on a Monday in November, after the Sunday night when we had turned back the clocks. I have a feeling this group will continue.
“It’s part of our lives now. Part of how we have endured and thrived and kept our spirits and our poetry alive.”
—from the introduction by Dorianne Laux
NICKEL
Seven poems from a group of rowdy poets playing The Poetry Game on a Monday
$15 + $5 shipping within the continental U.S
Weight of Bees Press, April 2022
Printed in an edition of 281 copies
Poems by: Matthew Dickman, Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, Dorianne Laux, Michael McGriff, Joseph Millar, & Sharon Olds
chapbook by
WEIGHT OF BEES
These chapbooks were printed with patience and hope in Lexington, Kentucky. The covers were printed on a Poco No. 0 Proofing press on stardream onyx cardstock; the endsheets were printed on an offset press; the inner pages in gray linen were printed on a home office laser printer, & the signatures were sewn together with a ridiculous amount of love at a kitchen table.
Vaughan Ashlie Fielder & Daniel Rose have been printing broadsides and making chapbooks together on and off for nearly fifteen years, and this is their first project together as Weight of Bees: a bunny-watching, letter-pressing, chapbook-making tendril of The Field Office.