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Sea Trails.
Pris Campbell. Lummoxpress. September 2009. $15.00 plus $ 3.00
S&H from Lummox or Amazon (plus Amazon mailing fee).
www.lummoxpress.com
by e-mail to
poetraindog@gmail.com
Checks should be made out to Lummoxpress: send to
Lummox
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Read Poems from
Sea Trails in
Sketchbook
About Sea Trails...
This 1977 trip was the fulfillment of a dream that the man I
will only refer to as R and I had, individually. Together, we
decided to make it reality. We lived in a commune in Boston
where expenses were low, but we still put ourselves on a strict
budget for two years. No frills allowed. My income was the one
high enough to qualify for a boat loan after we discovered the
boat that was to become Little Adventure. In the late seventies,
women still couldn’t be granted a loan unless a husband or
financially responsible male co-signed. I went to the bank
manager after being turned down by the assistants. He turned out
to be a sailor, himself, broke the rules and gave me the loan.
For that, I‘m grateful. I’m also grateful that such limitations
no longer exist for women.
Over the next two years we took Power Squadron courses on
everything from what knot fits what occasion to advanced
navigation to sail to engine maintenance. We practiced sail
maneuvers and man overboard drills as part of our preparation.
Our savings were meant to last for a year. They came mostly from
my salary while R paid off an old college loan. I also paid
health insurance for a year in advance for us both at a time
when that was completely affordable for people who weren’t
wealthy.
Our relationship, however, was dying as the time neared for us
to go, but the trip had taken on a life of its own. R’s anger
over my job success compared to his was a barbed wire for me to
deal with. His eye was beginning to rove, too. I wanted this
trip, though, and wasn’t out of love yet. Maybe I hoped the trip
would bring back what we’d lost. We gave notice in our jobs,
said our good-byes and left.
Was it crazy? Yes, in terms of our deteriorating relationship.
No, in terms of what was to become one of the most meaningful
adventures of my lifetime.
Pris Campbell
Commentary
“We never see things in themselves, only things as they appear
to our own particular sensibilities, moods, and associations.
Nowhere is that clearer than in poetry, and nowhere in poetry is
that clearer than in Pris Campbell’s new book, Sea Trails.
Part travelogue and part poetic narrative, the book brilliantly
counter-poses poetic revelations of the speaker as she moves
from “in love” to “out of love” and prose descriptions of a
journey down the American Intracoastal Waterway, including
details of the physical workings of the journey and of the
landscapes which sustain her. An emotional, sensual, and
visceral joy to read.”
~Scott Owens
Sea Trails by Pris Campbell, details a sailing trip down
the East Coast in 1977 with a man she later married. It includes
charts and Log Notes from this trip. Carter Monroe says: "How
interesting to actually see the source of inspiration from which
Pris Campbell riffs in this fascinating collection. A master at
the construction of tightly woven narratives, her work is like
the boat itself upon which the reader sails along beside her on
this incredible journey."
~Carter Monroe
About Pris Campbell
Pris
Campbell’s full-length book of poetry with accompanying log
notes, Sea Trails, was published in the
fall of 2009 by Lummox Press. Abrasions,
her first book by Rank Stranger Press now has only a limited
number of copies left. Interchangeable Goddesses,
with Tammy Trendle, was published by Rose of Sharon, a press run
by S.A. Griffin, editor of The Outlaw Bible of
American Poetry, and David Smith. Hesitant
Commitments, was released 2008 by Lummox Press in its
prestigious Little Red Book series.
Pris
Campbell's poetry appears in journals such as Chiron
Review, Main Street Rag, The Cliffs: Soundings, Wild Goose
Review, MiPo Productions, The Dead Mule School of Southern
Literature, and Boxcar Poetry Review. In 2008 and
2009, she was featured poet in Empowerment4Women, In
The Fray and From East to West. Her haiga and haiku
have appeared in Simply Haiku, Haigaonline. Moonset,
Sketchbook, Ink, Sweat, and Tears and several other
journals. Her poem in the spring 2007 issue of Boxcar
won the Peer Award for the issue and was nominated by that
journal for a 'Best of the Internet' Anthology.
She was again nominated for that honor by two journals in 2009.
Pris also was nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize
(2008/2009). A former Clinical Psychologist and former sailor,
sidelined by ME-CFS since 1990, she makes her home in the
greater West Palm Beach, Florida, with her husband, a runaway
dog, and a cat who sits on her poetry drafts.
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