first poetry book
"Reduction Fired"
WHAT DO OTHERS SAY?
High Quality
Accolades
Multiple 5-star reviews, including:
Several award mentions, including:
- Silver - Reader Views 2021-2022 Literary Awards (Poetry)
- Honourable Mention - 2022 London Book Festival's Book Awards
- Honorable Mention - 2022 San Francisco Book Festival's Book Awards
Various features, including:
- Inside Scoop Live podcast interview with Jennifer
Effort
Jennifer is always striving, even beyond her skill.
In this book, she attempted (not always successfully) to break lines where they may suggest more than one meaning, or lead the reader down one path only to make an abrupt turn at the end.
This enjambment can muddle the meaning instead of help it, yet the author hopes that those readers who wish might enjoy contemplating the multiple possibilities and the chosen outcome.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
Thoughtful
Title
For many, life is a trial by fire, like that of a clay vessel in a pottery kiln.
The book's intro alludes to this in describing the title:
"Reduction refers to the pottery method of firing a piece in low oxygen conditions – typically by slowly reducing the oxygen that feeds the kiln’s fire. Some colours of glazes result from reduction that aren’t achieved in oxidation.
It may also be that the fuel-starved fire pulls oxygen from the clay itself, and in doing so draws elements from deep in the clay up to the glaze. This can make it harder to determine the precise outcome of the glazed piece.
Reduction can even change the texture of the clay."
The cover is one of Jennifer's photos of the downtown Vancouver sky, showing a crisp white cloud that looked to her like a dragon descending from heaven.
Contents
The book is in 4 sections, each named for a 'season' of her life, and ordered in reverse.
As stated in her bio, the 4th section is from her early years (Spring, featuring parallelism), the 3rd section from her married life (Summer, in a short-line free verse), the 2nd section from an unrequited crush and her descent into illness (Autumn, with both haiku and the more fractured free verse of Chalk Drawings), and the 1st section from when her illness took over (Winter, with dark loneliness and splintering imagery that had one reviewer call Jennifer 'the Jackson Pollack of her craft').
WHERE IS IT FOUND?
Available
Shop Worldwide
Reduction Fired can be found at local and online sellers + libraries in 66 countries, including:
- Amazon / Kindle
- Google Play / Books
- Apple Books
- Barnes and Noble / Nook
- Kobo
- FNACby Kobo
- Indigo / Chapters
- AbeBooks
- Book Depository
- Alibris
- Blackwell’s
- Target
- Booktopia AU
- Walmart
- Bol.com (Netherlands)
ARE THERE OTHER WORKS?
Previously Published
Jennifer’s poems “Rain” and “Defined” were published in Ascent Aspirations Magazine, Anthology Three, Agua Terra, 2007. That magazine is no longer issued, but more recent anthologies of it are available from the publisher.