Coses Petites / Little Things 5.75 x 9"; three volumes 24 pages each. Printed on the Heidelberg press at Columbia Center for Book and Paper Arts. Illustrations by David Abed and James Hajicek. Book design by Kathi Beste. Each volume bound in paper wraps with pamphlet stitch. In paper slipcase with titles laser cut on side. Bilingual: English and Catalan. Numbered and initialed on the slipcase by Beste. Introduction: "These poems were written in 2000 by Anna Aguilar-Amat and Francesc Parcerisas, inspired by Arundhati Roy's 1997 novel The God of Small Things. The central love story of that book features an Indian woman who loves an Untouchable. Because she and her lover can't go out in the world together, their interactions and observations and discussions are limited to the 'little things' — for instance, plying with an ant, or talking about a stone or leaf. This series of poems was written as a way to communicate between two lovers as a dialogue between souls. "Anna Aguilar Amat and Francesc Parcerisas were friends, colleagues, and lovers at the time this book was written. Their personal relationship and ongoing writing collaboration started in 1999, and Little Things was written during the years 2000-2001. The poets started out simple commenting on each other's poems, and then began to work more closely. Eventually the poems began to take shape in a collaborative symbiosis, as they worked to develop the poems with four hands. One would name a subject ... The other would write four or five lines about it and then hand it over for editing. Modifications would be at times drastic, other times minimal. In some cases two very different versions emerged ... In those irreconcilable instances, the poets chose to retain both versions, having them appear side by side." "Although the poem titles of Coses Petites signify simple objects (“Apple,” “Stone”), Anna Aguilar-Amat’s and Francesc Parcerisas’ poems most often focus on large concepts—fear, sickness, commitment, or loss. The monumental abstract is reduced to a small digestible poem, allowing the poets to speak about love as a kind of force, or power, or energy that passes through all things. And, even when passion dies out, the common things touched by this energy remain both alive and blessed." Coses Petites was originally published in Catalan in 2002, as a limited edition art book by printmaker Miquel Plana. |
