A POETRY ART BOOK
EVERYDAY MERMAID
Poetry by Christina Isobel
Art by Deidre Scherer
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Everyday Mermaid is a collaborative fine art poetry book by Christina Isobel and Deidre Scherer Dive deeply into ordinary moments with Scherer's sewn textile art cradling Isobel's lyric narrative poetry.
Bathtub poems, washing-dishes poems, driving poems, walking poems, planting poems, looking-out window poems. Poems of marriage, giving birth, looking at grey hair. Poems of the ordinary. Moment to moment, day by day, season by season, living into growing older. Isobel had to stay open each day and be ready when the hum came--ready to write. At the end of the year, she looked into her hands and saw a poetic journal, a journal with gold at the end: she had found her life.
Isobel reached out to dear friend and artist, Deidre Scherer. They worked intimately to create cross-current visuals that invite the reader into the tactile inner world of the poems. Scherer created luminous images that cradle the poems and map the flow of Isobel’s life through the year.
ISBN: 978-1-949824-00-1
Publish Date: April 2020
Pages: 54: 64 illustrations/ 34 poems
Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.75 x .32
Weight: .59 lbs
“This book is a must-read. Filled with resonance and beauty. Christina Isobel's poetry is a compelling blend of ordinary and mystical; deceptively simple and rapturous. Her journey is grounded in a profound sense of the divine in everyday life. Scherer’s remarkable artwork enhances and deepens the poems beautifully. I return to these poems again and again, finding new meaning each time.”
Gina Blaber
“Everyday Mermaid traces a journey in the waters of the soul. With language spare as bone, they reveal the daily appearances of insight and grace in a Woman’s life. Tuned to the large cycles and the body’s wisdom, from a woman with night visions and animal helpers, these poems leap from the ordinary to the extraordinary.”
Gwynn O”Gara, Poet Laureate of Sonoma County
AUTHOR/ARTIST
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Christina Isobel
POET
My poems all come from connection. The experience penetrates, whether with a person, bird, tree, flower, rain…I listen for the sounds, and words emerge. They evoke rhythms, tone, and pace while painting images and forging a through-line. these components create a sensate experience of connection. I want to take you there.
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Deidre Scherer
ARTIST
The visual language of printed textiles actively engages one’s eye with its pointillist patterning. I draw freely with scissors, cutting into color fields of cottons. Then, layering and machine stitching the cut pieces. I Merge or emphasize contours, defining form. We are wrapped in cloth from through death: fabric awakens memories shaped by our sense of touch.
Begin on a standing wave and follow the hints of the mermaid flowing into winter, spring, summer, fall, and winter. Experience the light and colors of the seasons as they shape insights, feelings, and epiphanies..
