Tuesday, November 7, 2017

MINERALIS by Patricia Cram


I want to take this opportunity to inform my readers about Mineralis, a new chapbook of prose and poetry from the astonishingly talented Patricia Cram.

I had the privilege of working with Patricia when she, myself, and Daniel A. Schulke co-edited Penumbrae: An Occult Fiction Anthology for Three Hands Press in 2015. It was during this project that I was first introduced to her literary work. Her contribution to that book, "Turquoise on a Bed of Skulls," (now included in Mineralis) alerted me to a writer with a singular voice and a fearless spirit. Having now read this, a more recent and robust serving of her visions, my admiration for her art has only deepened.

Patricia writes with a delicacy that infuses her grim and wrenching subject matter with poetic lustre and a perennial undercurrent of the sublime. As an author, I felt a certain exhilaration reading tales that were so refreshingly liberated from the often-stifling confines of conventional narrative structure. Patricia does not pander, and I find true inspiration in her refusal to provide the lull of the mundane, the comfort of the sure.

Mineralis is a chandelier of language. Its images are delivered in brilliant shards that are as sharp as they are beautiful.

I encourage interested parties to obtain a copy, which can be done via Snakeroot Works.