in Mexico with Rose Hunter (or: reading A Foal Poem)

For the last couple of days, i've been in Mexico every morning for some minutes. It's one of the countries i've never been to myself, but that doesn't feel all foreign - there even is a city i walked through in images and in lines repeatedly: Puerto Vallarta, home of poet + friend Rose Hunter.

Her book A Foal Poem is both a collection of poems, and a poetic travelogue that takes the reader into the inner reality of places, beyond the tourist facades. it starts with a map, and my first touch of it was "Aposematic" - a poem that was first published in BluePrintReview, here's one of its road lines:

me the butterfly and you the relentless road,
with zircon glints
!

Later, another poem become base of a collaboration that moved through several places: Puertos, and on the third page, it's Puerto Vallarta again, with its beach road, the Malecón:

concrete for miles, yet
it's this section
of the Malecón
that has been
chosen for
soapy water
bucket
bleach

Finally, when Foal took shape, i helped with the cover- the image is based on a street scene from Vallarta, and the process of getting the cover together for POD later lead to a (rather unpoetic) how-to-entry in the blueprint book blog: How to create a book cover for print-on-demand services like CreateSpace

but back to Foal:
I first read the book right after it was published, and now am revisiting it, and like with journeys, when visiting a place again, you see more, the details, the patterns forming within, how one place and thought leads to another. maybe that started already during the first read, when at some point, i felt drawn to gather lines for a found poem, which eventually got published in the Found Poetry Review: Or, a Moral Inventory

Someone recently said: "With books like this, I don't need to travel, I get there in words" - and this is how Foal feels to me, this touch of another place, woven into pages that wrap you up while reading - and like with most foreign places, it takes a bit to get into this different world that comes with rebar houses and tejones appearing - until, at some point, those become part of your own  vocabulary, and you find yourself, walking along a relentless road, thinking of a foal. 
--

Book link, About,  & Review Forward

For more about Rose's book Foal, her bio, and her other books, visit her website

Some lines about me: I'm into roads, stories, places, crossings, and all the things they lead and connect to. I edit BluePrintReview and the blueprint book + lit blog. For more of my personal book reviews, click here: "Books", and for a bit more about me and the web projets i'm involved in, visit me at blueprint21. Apart from being an editor and blogger, I am also an author myself. My new book Worlds Apart just launched, and Rose was one of the authors who read an early version of it and accompanied the whole process that leads from draft to final book. Thanks for that!

Worlds Apart - a true story about 2 friends, 2 journeys, and 10 life lessons:  
In the global world, a traveler from Europe and a teacher from Asia meet in the web, share their journeys, and the joys, longings, and life lessons that wait along the road. Captured in letters and photos that reach from China and India to Germany and the Mediterranean Sea, a dialogue across continents and cultures unfolds: Worl(d)s Apart

Review Forward: This book review is inspired by Review Forward, a new online initiative for authors & book bloggers. For more reviews, visit the facebook page or the twitter-stream.