Tumbling for Amateurs

(Paperback)

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A reimagining of an instructional text on tumbling supports poems about the amateurishness of being human.

Tumbling for Amateurs is a reimagining of James Tayloe Gwathmeys 1910 book of the same name, published as part of Spaldings Athletic Library. Bookended with Propositions on why tumbling is a skill that everyone should learn and Extracts from Letters of Support, each verso poem in this collection pairs with a recto illustration based on drawings from the source text. In the spirit of William Blakes Songs of Innocence and of Experience, word and image work for each other, creating something more than just an instructional manual.

Tumbling is, well, a metaphor for everything. And we all are, well, amateurs. Experimentation abounds in these poems and manipulated pictures. There are anaphoras, list sonnets, erasures, palimpsests and concrete poems, all working from tumblings limited vocabulary and central focus of acrobatics and gymnastics. In this experimentation of form and text is a search for the lyric, for an emotional connection when one isnt always possible, in bodies, in movement, in desire. We measure our lives by what our bodies can do.

"Matthew Gwathmeys poems, springboarding from a genre of fitness manual popular in the early twentieth century, tumble us into the present through tests gamily set for body and mind. As ripped as his gymnast protagonists evoked so fetchingly in the books illustrations Gwathmey writes a poetry eschewing the lyrical in favour of a stripped-down, athletic language that gives shape to 'what must remain / nameless.' Therere so many ways to read ourselves into Tumbling for Amateurs. Go toe to toe with these poems and theyll tone up your grip on what poetry is." John Barton, author of Lost Family

Author Bio

Matthew Gwathmey was born in Richmond, Virginia, and currently lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on Wolastoqey Territory, with his partner Lily and their five children. He studied creative writing at the University of Virginia and recently completed his PhD at UNB. He has work published in The Malahat Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead and The Iowa Review, as well as other literary magazines. His first poetry collection, Our Latest in Folktales, was published by Brick Books in the spring of 2019.