Slender Volumes
POEMS BY RICHARD VON STURMER
$ 38.00
Slender Volumes locates the cypress trees of Buddhist folklore in Onehunga and the teachings of the Zen tradition along its foreshore.
Elaborating on kōans collected by poet-philosopher Eihei Dōgen, each poem fastens centuries and distances together to find insight in everyday things: seagulls on a handrail, insects drinking from a pan of water, sump oil glistening in a white bucket.
Clear-sighted and compassionate, Slender Volumes recovers what it means to be intimate with our surroundings and to meet the particulars of our world with perfect curiosity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard von Sturmer is a writer, performer and filmmaker who is well known for having written the lyrics to Blam Blam Blam’s “There is No Depression in New Zealand.” He is a teacher of Zen Buddhism and the co-founder of the Auckland Zen Centre. Slender Volumes is his tenth collection of writings.
PRAISE
“Slender Volumes isn’t just profound, it’s funny, earthy, mesmerising, warm, intricate. I read these poems wide-eyed with delight and wonder. On his journey through the material world, the poet shows us how every moment can be full of marvel and beauty; more than that, he makes it so with his exquisite telling. I do believe Slender Volumes is von Sturmer’s most miraculous work.”
— Anne Kennedy
“Illuminating, playful and delicious, each poem from Slender Volumes takes us to a different remembered detail in Richard von Sturmer’s storied life. Imbued with mischievous observations and whimsical side-eyes, everyday happenings are elevated into something more.”
— Renee Liang
“Richard von Sturmer’s Slender Volumes is a collection of evocative, elegant and finely crafted prose poems, but it is also an epic about the progress of a soul, and a work of profound scholarship too. Here is writing that restores wisdom literature to its place in the centre of our endeavours and at the heart of our preoccupations.”
— Martin Edmond
INFORMATION
Published 11 November 2024
ISBN 978-1-0670189-0-0
192 pages, paperback
130 x 196 mm
First edition of 400