Sky-Mammals

By Blair Hamelink

In his new collection of poems, Blair Hamelink portrays a life in the sky, blending his passion and woe with lyric velocity. In this book, the allure of the whimsy inevitably meets the tragedy, as was the flight of Icarus, and as is the skydiver's lifestyle of "toil & suave / adrenaline & repent." With particular desperation and spinal a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blair Hamelink
• Release date: May 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798218395995

Blair Hamelink

Blair Hamelink was born in Dunedin, New Zealand. He has lived in the United States since 2009 where he works as a skydiving instructor. Blair has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature from Southern New Hampshire University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing and poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. He is the author of the chapbook, "Ill Weathers & Other Fates" (Quillkeepers Press, 2024). He has also been published in Bombay Gin Literary Journal, and by Kavyayantra Press. He lives in Colorado with his dog.

Book preview

SKYMAMMALSCOVER_001

SKY-MAMMALS

Blair Hamelink

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Copyright, Blair Hamelink 2024

Cover design by Blair Hamelink

Edit and formatting by Blair Hamelink

Printed by IngramSpark in the United States of America.

Paperback ISBN: 979-8-218-39598-8

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be

reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the

express written permission of the publisher except for the use of

brief quotations in a book review.

This book contains some works of fiction. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales are completely coincidental. Any references to pop culture are owned by their specific companies and are not property of the author.

There are some poems here within that represent thoughts of the author. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For the Parachute Center in Lodi, California

When a man does not admit that he is an animal, he is less than an animal

-Michael McClure

Author’s Preface

The poems in this book use skydivers as its muse. Skydivers are a group I have known well in the 17 years I have been active in the sport. They are perhaps a group best known for their revelings and self-proclamations of feralism and revolt. Of which, I, too, dabbled in, as I put that briefest flight on a pedestal. But, at some point, (I think, around jump number 15,000) as I started to gently decompose, I came to understand (or completely fabricated the idea) that the physical pain, and the fading zest I had been experiencing was conclusive of the triteness that is skydiving, that is simple, predictable, mechanics. Something that poetry is not. Jazz is not. And for some reason this realization warranted a certain poetry of velocity that corrupted my obsessions and this book.

Adrenaline first came to me in the form of not-knowing, as the unknown stimulus, potential of barely scraping by. A thrill similar to creation—where something comes out of nothing, but not quite. With the skydive there was never any something coming out of nothing it was merely a plaything of wind and dance, looming with mundane briefness; it was all repeat performances, improvising on the slightness of gravity. However, unlike jazz, each repeating performance was less and less convincing that flight is, in fact, a phenomena, and what a strange, privileged thought that is to have.

With poetry, during the process of a poem’s creation, its trajectory is unknown—but with the skydive, it is a known science as imminent as throwing rocks. Therefore, in these poems, I decided to remove skydivers from the monotony of their