Description
PACKING was the first chapbook in the 2012-2013 series from Bloof Books. Each chapbook in the series was released in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release. Packing is also included in our first chapbook-compilation paperback, BOUND: The First Array.
These poems are not only about packing up and leaving behind a city and making a move—from Philadelphia to Nashville–they also explore linear and serial narratives and the ways each can represent events and the compounded passage of time.
you love the stone
it stays, only moves or changes in relation to you
when really what I’ve been polishing is the face on the back of my head
the mirror components
my elbow that bends the other way, my foot that leads from the other side of me
still, I’m moving to Nashville so I wrote this song about forgiveness
—from “The Stone That Produces Milk”
The design concept of Packing incorporated the use of recycled/upcycled materials (just like collecting used boxes to pack for a move), so all the paper and most of the cover stock came from previous projects, and the packing materials were themed too. Another aspect of the concept was to keep the book affordable and unfussy: a minimalist cover illustration, no-frills formatting. Just Hailey’s great poems classically saddle stapled, five bucks.