Jake Caleb: Through soft seam slips the knife ultramarine

Through soft seam slips the knife ultramarine (2023) is a collection of poems made over the course of 2020 observing people, place and nature. Written largely during a time conditioned by the pandemic, the poems pay close attention to plant-life and the particular interactions of people within the vicinity of Rotterdam where the artist lives. With the disruption that Covid-19 caused to the dictating rhythms of work, the poems note different—often older—modes of marking time, such as the arrival of certain flowers or the shifting length of day. Within their lines, these seemingly cosmic rhythms become juxtaposed with the atemporal actions of people estranged from social convention, using poetic language as a container that can hold these contrasting perceptions of time. In addition, the plurality of meaning the language allowed became a way of sense making when other commonly held understandings were found to be suddenly redundant.

The collection is published by Short Pieces That Move! a Rotterdam based publishing project initiated by Kate Briggs, Annabelle Binnerts, Linus Bonduelle, Ash Kilmartin and Petter Dahlström Persson. The pamphlet was launched at De Kas, Rotterdam on 15th July 2023 alongside other editions by Kate Moss, Xaiofeini Liu & Kate Price and Ash Kilmartin.