Ink Earl

Shortlisted for the ReLit 2022 Poetry Award

ink earl takes the popular subgenre of erasure poetry to its illogical conclusion.

Starting with ad copy that extols the iconic Pink Pearl eraser, Holbrook erases and erases, revealing more and more. Rubbing out different words from this decidedly non-literary, noncanonical source text, she was left with the promise of “100 essays” and set about to find them. Among her discoveries are queer love poems, art projects, political commentary, lunch, songs, and entire extended families.

The absurdity of the constraint lends itself to plenty of fun and funny, while reminding us of truths assiduously erased by normative forces. ink earl’s variations are testament in micro to the act of poiesis as not so much a building as an intrepid series of effacements; we rub away at the walls of language we’ve lived within in order to release both what’s been written over, and what we want to say now.

AUTHOR

Susan Holbrook

Edited by Susan Holbrook and Dawn Marie Kresan. Holbrook teaches North American Literatures and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor, and is the current poetry editor for The Windsor Review. Her poetry books include the Trillium-nominated Joy Is So Exhausting (2009), the chapbook Good Egg Bad Seed (2004), and misled (1999), which was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award. Kresan lives in Kingsville, where she works as a freelance graphic designer and the publisher of Palimpsest Press. Her poetry books include Muse (2013) and a limited edition chapbook Framed (2009).