Dovetail

A Conversation Chapbook by Kimiko Hahn & Tamiko Beyer (2017). 30 pages. Winner of the 2017 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition. Dovetail is a sequence of poems germinated from words Kimiko Hahn and Tamiko Beyer traded back and forth — words from their childhood, words with meanings that echo and resound across decades and cultures: between the U.S. and Japan, across childhood and adulthood, between writer and reader.

“Kimiko Hahn and Tamiko Beyer’s Dovetail (Slapering Hol Press, 2017) is a beautiful object, featuring a dark blue cover with a letterpress title and the faintest silver outlines of the shapes of two dovetailing pieces of wood coming together around a cutout that allows a glimpse into the woodblock print on the second page. … The collaboration between Hahn and Beyer began as an exchange of words and phrases from their respective childhoods that ‘resonated and radiated over time,’ a process that the authors describe as being like a game of Cat’s Cradle. ‘It invokes strong tactile memories of the feel of yarn through my fingers, the loosening and tightening, my fingers stiff or agile — and a visual memory of the magic of patterns emerging from a set of memorized actions,’ Beyer writes.” —Hyphen Magazine