Publications

Empty Boathouse:
Adirondack Haiku
Madeleine Findlay

Winner -- Second Place --
2009 Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit Book Award for Excellence in Published Haiku

44 pages, 7 x 6.5 inches 
Hardcover with dust jacket
Illustrated throughout
ISBN 0-9740895-3-2
Designed by Susan Kress Hamilton at Phineas in Portsmouth, NH

$35.00 (includes shipping and handling)

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Sample spread - click to enlarge

Madeleine Findlay’s first book, Shaped Water: A Haiku Year, was greeted with enthusiasm. “This is a carefully crafted book in every dimension, a ‘year’ to set above any other I know in haiku lately. A wonderful debut book for both press and poet” (William J. Higginson). In her new book, a collaboration with designer Susan Hamilton, Findlay draws on a lifetime of experience in the Adirondacks, one of the most celebrated of American landscapes. Every page reminds us that this icon of wilderness is a fragile work of time: through the intersection of haiku and photograph, the book breaks with the tradition of the American sublime to explore a multi-dimensional reality. Each page explores the spaces between words and images, both verbal and visual; the effect is haiku-squared. Empty Boathouse recalls the alchemy of the rivers-and-mountain tradition of ancient China. In the presence of the creatures of this world—the loon calling out from the far end of the lake, a fly crawling up a porch screen, the neighbor’s dog under the table—artists and readers alike assume their modest role as witness to creation.

Empty Boathouse: Adirondack Haiku placed second in the Haiku Society of America 2009 Mildred Kanterman Memorial Merit Book Award for books published in 2008. “Everything about this collection by Madeleine Findlay is carefully crafted: the photographic images of a bygone era blend perfectly with the haiku. ‘Each page explores the spaces between words and images, both verbal and visual: the effect is haiku-squared’ (from the jacket flap). Presented as an extended haiga a new/old aesthetic emerges that honors place and time and memory. Almost all of the photographs were gleaned from her family’s collection. The effect is stunning. This hardcover volume is a unique synthesis in the book arts.” -- Award Announcement

“Madeleine Findlay has an extremely sharp/delicate command of imagery. Everything just happens with the simplicity of the inevitable.”      -- Raymond Oliver

“Empty Boathouse is a lovely book on all counts, with evocative haiku, antique photographs, and top-flight production values combining to make an item of great beauty.”
-- Modern Haiku, Summer, 2009

“The eye-fetching front cover photo of an empty boathouse is only the start of a pleasurable experience turning the inside pages with their 15 photos (plus two more on the back cover and flap), almost all of which were taken from the author’s family albums. The 32 haiku (counting one on the back cover flap) complement the photos perfectly: in the dappled shade / the man and rake are one -- / basket of old leaves // filaments of light / through weathered slats / empty boathouse. Overall, a wonderful evocation of a family’s long-ago summer retreat.

-- George Swede (Ontario), Haiku Society of America: Frogpond, January, 2009

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Click desired item for more information:

- Under the Moon
- A Boy's Seasons: Haibun Memoirs
- Empty Boathouse: Adirondack Haiku
- Accidental Pilgrim
- Shaped Water: A Haiku Year
- Raymond Oliver His Book of Hours
- Sophia & The Gringo