A letter from your sheets// if your sheets could speak.
by Elizabeth Kemball
Publication Date: 10 March 2020
Nightingale & Sparrow Press
10 Pages
Genre: Poetry
This microchapbook explores the idea of giving a voice to the inanimate, through imagining a letter written from a person’s bed sheets. When I started writing this piece, I was looking at writing a poem distanced from the ‘I’ which I find myself writing most often; I wanted to instead write from the perspective of something that does not have a voice of its own. Sheets are witness to a huge portion of humans’ lives: sleep, sorrow, romance, sex, death, and more. By using this voice I delved into a voyeuristic but gentle observation of a place in which humans are often at their most vulnerable.
Our sheets are primarily places of comfort and solace, but also isolation. I was intrigued by the concept of what people are like when they think nothing is watching – when they are allowed to be their barest self. It may read like a confession or a love letter, and I think to each person it will vary depending on their own relationship with sheets and sleep – one of the few activities all humans partake in. This book is a fragmented narrative, of flashes of actions and images that give us an insight into the person’s life through the moments that they spend in their bed.
This tiny book contains one full-length poem and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run.
Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted/folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character!
Print | Kindle | Digital PDF
Author Statement
Editor’s Note
Interview
Excerpt
About the Author
Elizabeth Kemball is an English writer and illustrator whose work has featured in journals including Black Bough, Ink Sweat & Tears, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Iceberg Tales. Her writing often focuses on bodies, myth, and nature. In July 2018 she graduated with a first class degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick. She is an Editor & Designer for the online literary arts zine Re-Side and is currently being mentored by Mari Ellis Dunning.
