Space Between These Lines Not Dedicated
The poet, just like the pope, should always be among the people.
— T.J. Jackson, elder patron, Dirty Frank's Bar, Philadelphia.
Dark times require courageous writing — committed poems rooted in communities, with all their struggles and transformations. Frank Sherlock has written through the realities of those in opposition to power with sharp, bold and uncompromising poetry for decades. The reappearance of Frank's words couldn't be timelier, as dystopia and prevailing uncertainties demand clarity, strength and determination from writing.
— Carlos Soto-Roman
The long awaited re-issue of this landmark book by the 2014/15 Philadelphia poet laureate! Beloved for its easy-going empathy & generous solidarity, it is also a glittering, detail-encrusted love-letter to cities of "otherly love.
10 years later, Sherlock's achievement is as fresh, energizing & necessary as ever: Conjuring amd ventriloquizing our voices, phrases, hopes, sky-blotting disappointments, manic crazy schemes & fevered dreams... then beaming them back at us, full force, until love grows wild again — through every crack in every heart and every sidewalk.
The son of a secretary and a city worker - and winner of a 2013 Pew Fellowship - Sherlock's work has always sprung, root & branch, from the lives of ordinary folks, in relationships with others and their environments, as natural animals. In this, he's been aided immeasurably by his history as door-man at Dirty Frank's Bar in Philadelphia, regarded by its patrons and other discerning folks as the greatest Bar in the known universe.
“I approach poetry as a cartographer,” said Sherlock. “Mapping and remapping your surroundings according to your personal memory and associations and histories that you’ve heard.” He has long seen poetry as direct action - an actual tool for bonding, forging connections & conversations... ultimately building, healing and sustaining the various communities that give us meaning: home. Poems beyond the page have found their forms in installations, workshops & exhibitions that engaged with at-risk youth, worked with immigrant communities and shared restorative justice practices.
10 years later, Sherlock's achievement is as fresh, energizing & necessary as ever: Conjuring amd ventriloquizing our voices, phrases, hopes, sky-blotting disappointments, manic crazy schemes & fevered dreams... then beaming them back at us, full force, until love grows wild again — through every crack in every heart and every sidewalk.
The son of a secretary and a city worker - and winner of a 2013 Pew Fellowship - Sherlock's work has always sprung, root & branch, from the lives of ordinary folks, in relationships with others and their environments, as natural animals. In this, he's been aided immeasurably by his history as door-man at Dirty Frank's Bar in Philadelphia, regarded by its patrons and other discerning folks as the greatest Bar in the known universe.
“I approach poetry as a cartographer,” said Sherlock. “Mapping and remapping your surroundings according to your personal memory and associations and histories that you’ve heard.” He has long seen poetry as direct action - an actual tool for bonding, forging connections & conversations... ultimately building, healing and sustaining the various communities that give us meaning: home. Poems beyond the page have found their forms in installations, workshops & exhibitions that engaged with at-risk youth, worked with immigrant communities and shared restorative justice practices.
Sherlock's mission, then? "Be a face for poetry. Raise the art form’s profile in the city. Chip away at the notion of poetry as a hermetic, alienated practice. Bring it into our everyday city living. Make it interactive. Participatory. Inviting."
And that has been, exactly, the growing gift of Frank's work, and why readers didn't greet this book and its poems with mere enthusiasm — they embraced it with a bear-hug from their soul. As will you — dig it.