September is for Savouring the Sweet-ish Taste of Suspension
The Reading Room, now open for The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar
It is with delight that I announce that the September Reading Room is now open, featuring our Poetry Book Club selection for this month: The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar.
Now, this isn’t strictly a poetry book. It’s like a journal, every day of the month featuring a poem or story (a mix of memoir and slice of life fairy tale)—all inspired by a particular variety of honey. Did you even know there are (at least) 28?
Amal did her one-month honey-tasting challenge during February, but it definitely feels like an end of summer book to me. I’ve read this book twice now, most recently taking it as my one book selection on a camping trip in the mountains of BC. There’s something about it that suspends time, which is why I thought it’d be perfect for September—when the sun drops a few minutes earlier every day until it’s so noticeable you can’t help but ask: where did all the time go?
Level: Beginner-friendly
Length: Short
Wonder Scale: Effervescent
Keywords: Savoury, Off-Kilter, Magical, Cozy, Sensuous
Also, this is the first time I’m testing this new WIP format, an extension of the adventurous spirit that’s the genesis of this newsletter. Enjoy! And by the way, this poetry book club is best served however you like.
—Ana
Welcome to the reading room
You step into a room, entering through a nondescript door. You don’t know what you’re getting into. But if I were to describe it to you, what the other side is like, I’d say:
The air is thick with varying degrees of anticipating.
There’s a feeling that something is being counted down off in the horizon.
It’s the colour of honey, thick and translucent. But if you look close enough, you’ll see shimmering facets of colour weaving in and out: green air, sky-mirrors, fleshy kisses.
It’s a shape-shifting world of surprises and delights. You can see taste and it smells like magic.
What people are saying
As you open the door, echoes of what other people who’ve ventured in have said fill the air:
Twenty-eight days there are in the month of February, a cold month, a month in which the summer seems an endless dream one had once, long ago. We should not be tricked by the frost, for it was during the dreaming month of February that Amal El-Mohtar composed The Honey Month, a book that tastes and smells of sun. Each day she uncapped a vial of honey, letting the brew inspire the words that became this book. Amal offers us much more than poetry and prose, however. Her words wrap around us like spiderwebs, gently pulling us into the web she weaves, where honey girls tempt and tease us, where things lost return and sorrow paints the leaves. This is a colourful book, but it is by no means a frivolous one. Remember, not all honey is sweet. —From the publisher
Among 2010's most exquisite and overlooked treasures. —Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
Lovely and delirious. —A Barnes and Noble customer review
A sampler
As you enter and close the door behind you, you take off your shoes. You could be here a while. A pair of slippers appears at your feet and you put them on. As you step forward, there’s a platter of poems waiting for you. You pick one up and taste it.
Day 8 - Raspberry Creamed Honey:
There’s an unpleasantness—an odd non-food smell, like sugared belly-button fuzz, and warm.
Day 9 - Zambian Honey:
Sunshine—my first impression. Spring sunshine, golden without heat, because the wind’s stolen it away.
Day 11 - Blackberry Honey:
I cannot sleep. The earth is knotted with screams. I taste blueberries on my tongue and dream of nothing.
Day 12 - Red Gum Honey:
The world is not for catching, love not for having, not for keeping. The world is all for sipping, love so tilt your head back and drink.
Day 14 - Raspberry Honey:
Take these four kisses on your brow take this velvet winding sheet, take these words I've written you and swallow them with tea. I've worked so hard for you today, and I am weary, emptied all- and all I want is a little bed with a curved moon swinging and another in the room, singing.
Day 16 - Blueberry Honey:
Taste: Blue and cold. Water on a bright day, so blue as to challenge those who would call the water colourless, a sky-mirror. It’s a deep blue, and it’s a liquid honey, the flexible kind that spindles itself into shapes when stretched. Active, passionate, deep.
Day 19 - Honeydew Honey:
The fall morning tastes of wet grass remembering the sun, the summer morning tastes of lilacs and the waking of bees. And spring mornings taste of honeydew honey, and spring.
Day 21 - Bamboo Honey:
The air is green as lychee-shine.
Discussion corner
You walk into a cozy corner with a couch that expands to fit however many number of people desire to sit down, that doesn’t know the meaning of catch-up because everyone arrives at the time they are supposed to. There, you hear discussions happening. They’re talking about The Honey Month, some who’ve read it, some who haven’t yet—but all are very welcome. Some lurk as curious observers about to get entrapped in the buzz of conversation—or get out before they fall in too deep.
You can’t make out what they’re saying. You need to get closer. Will you?
The portal
A collage, a library, a computer? It’s a shape-shifting portal of expansion, and as you get closer, you pick up what it’s putting down, a web of links that live in nearby universes:
This diary of “infrathin sensations” [via The Paris Review]
Infrathin = coined by Marcel Duchamp, to reference the subtle almost imperceptible differences between things
Odorbet is a blog exploring the language of scent
Seasons of Glass and Iron is an award-winning fantasy/fairy tale short story by Amal, the author of The Honey Month
Amal is also the New York Times Book Review’s science fiction and fantasy columnist
Advice to a New Beekeeper by Susan Cormier (this essay won the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize—and it is good)
What else happens in a month? The moon completes a cycle and
publishes a piece on a different topic for the senses.If you want to take part in a similar poetic challenge for a month, stay tuned for Escapril, happening every April.
And if you’re inspired to dive deeper into flavour excavation and cross-genre writing, Atlas Obscura has a food memoir writing workshop, a lecture series on spices, and a fairy tale writing course.
If you liked The Honey Month and its themed collection of cross-genre poetics, you might also like: Owls and Other Fantasies by Mary Oliver (theme: birds) and Bluets by Maggie Nelson (theme: blue).
Continue this adventure?
Support the “dying art of poetry” and purchase your own copy of The Honey Month. And go see what else Amal El-Mohtar is up to.
Before you head out
Use the hashtag #violetsareread if you’re reading The Honey Month!
Enter the Reading Room’s ongoing discussion thread to see what others thought, add your own favourite excerpts, and discuss this month’s prompt(s). No rush. The Reading Room opens and changes every month, but its contents never disappear. There is always room to jump in anytime.
Vote on October’s poetry book club selection:
🌹 Members only: Win The Honey Month!
Did you notice? There was a bookshelf in the corner of the Reading Room, with exactly 5 copies of The Honey Month. Will one of them be yours or will you have to venture further out into the wild to procure your own copy?
Fill out the form below to be entered for a chance to win 1 of 5 copies of The Honey Month. Winners will be drawn and emailed on or before August 28. P.S. Paid subscriptions are 20% off until the end of August.