Ocean of Static

J.R. Carpenter's debut poetry collection, An Ocean of Static, transforms the North Atlantic archive into a sea of fresh text, exploring the elusive passages of women, animals, indigenous people, and migrants.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 158 pages
Publication date: 24 April 2018
Publisher: Penned in the Margins

From the late 15th century onwards, a flurry of voyages were made into the North Atlantic in search of fish, the fabled Northwest Passage, and beyond into the territories purely imaginary. Today, this vast expanse is crisscrossed with ocean and wind currents, submarine cables and wireless signals, seabirds and passengers, static and cargo ships. In her long-awaited poetry debut, award-winning digital writer and artist J.R. Carpenter transforms the dense, fragmented archive of the North Atlantic into an astonishing sea of fresh new text. Cartographic and maritime vernaculars inflected with the syntax and grammar of ships logs and code languages splinter and pulse across the page. Haunting, politically charged, and formally innovative, An Ocean of Static presents an ever-shifting array of variables. Amid global currents of melting sea ice and changing ocean currents, Carpenter charts the elusive passages of women and animals, of indigenous people and migrants, of strange noises and phantom islands.

Weight: 222g
Dimension: 199 x 133 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781908058461