Book delayed

The book has been delayed due to the acceptance of other books by Kevin and Jonathan, which will be published first. This blog will remain inactive until late 2010.

The Words of the Book

Available December 2009 from BookThug Press
Subscribe to the BookThug 2009 season now

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
—Revelation 22:19

Jonathan Ball and kevin mcpherson eckhoff take their digital scissors to the Western world’s authoritative poetry collection, the King James Bible, auto-summarizing it to 1%. Juxtaposing the remaining text against “scholarly” commentary—philosophical musings, bawdy wordplay, mutinous quotations—the authors isolate and accelerate a number of the Bible’s major motifs, including male dominance, inheritance, justice, love, and absolute submission before God. The result is an interpretive dance among the gardens of language, the computer software biting into apples of meaning as it winds through the orchard of the source texts. At once a homage to the beauty and power of the Bible’s language, a critique of its politics, and a parody of fundamentalist interpretation, The Words of the Book is an essential reference for skeptics and snake handlers alike.

Jonathan Ball is a writer, filmmaker, scholar, and the former editor of dandelion. His poetry and fiction has appeared across Canada and in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, and his film Spoony B appeared on The Comedy Network. The independent feature film Snake River is based on his screenplay Way of the Samurai (co-written with David Navratil and Joseph Novak). Visit Jonathan online at www.jonathanball.com.

Sometimes kevin mcpherson eckhoff writes poetry, which sometimes gets printed in journals like filling Station and dandelion, and sometimes he writes essays that find their way into Open Letter. His visual poetry collection, rhapsodomancy, will appear from Coach House Books in 2010. Sometimes he makes chapbooks with his small press, by the skin of me teeth. Sometimes he makes art. His solo show, typortraits, ran at Gallery Vertigo in September 2008. Sometimes he teaches literature at Okanagan College and other times he hangs out with his partner, Laurel, and their always precocious dachshund, Cedar.