What is THOT J BAP?

The Heart Of This Journey Bears All Patterns:

An Epic Fantasy in Verse

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One afternoon, in an old house in an abandoned village on the outskirts of Perimeter, in the place they call Pacifica, Bramah and the Beggar Boy find fragments of an ancient text in an oak box…

Thus began Bramah and the Beggar Boy, Book One of THOT J BAP. By the end, Bramah, a demigoddess trained as a locksmith, is forced to leave her adopted grandmother and the Beggar Boy they rescued, as well as the magic oak box they found, as she hurtles through a portal to the past on a mission to discover her own origins.

In Book Two, Bramah’s Quest, her mission continues: she searches not only for her story, but also for her people—helping Seed Savers and resisters battle against the evil Consortium in a world ever more devastated by climate change and global inequality.

If the beating heart of Book One was the parchment-scroll story of the ill-fated Dr. A.E. Anderson and her adopted daughter Abigail, at the centre of Book Two is the love affair between Abigail’s son Raphael and the Warrior General Sherronda who helps wrest victory away from Consortium, at least for a brief while.

THOT J BAP is:

Epic in that it is long: each book is a poem and there are several books that comprise the series. And epic in that the themes are broad and deep and include the battle between good and evil, and the effects of accelerated climate change and global inequality.

Fantasy in that there is time travel, shape-shifting, magic realism. Many things happen, some good, mostly bad, including five eco-catastrophes and yes, a bio-contagion (pandemic).

Verse in that the story is told through poetic forms often used in the epic: blank verse, cantos, sonnets, madrigals, chants, ballads, spells and codes, as well as the merging of these traditional forms with my signature docu-poetics where the language of reportage and historical texts is mimicked and repurposed for the long poem.

Sample Poems from Book Two of THOT J BAP, Bramah’s Quest:

            
_______Moon Song at High Tide
 
Of your many losses, colloidal face:
scars turned to night-river reflections, fierce
polluted waters, effluent, old mills
speaking in an undertow dialect.
Of your many losses, sly grinning face
shredding clouds, rushing against that other
face that is no face, far future, oak box
blackened with trouble, ground into granite
empty and full, filled with discarded dreams.
My heart, no cedar-lined hope chest, clambers
empty and full, fragrant lost seasons call
words into signs, six-sided, pushing waves
time’s current forward, back, of many lost.
My heart rests in your laughing waters, gone.

Tale of the Sword Turned Seed Saver

As a child I was obsessed with safety, security and secrets.
And magic, and walking to the river where I’d run
skipping stones, leaping over tires at night set to fire—
then to the culvert, it were after the Battle of Kingsway.
Safe house what some called Manse, large yellow brickwalled
garden, hidden door, honey locust trees brushing.
There to find tacked to the Seed Savers’ hut,
a Shiva calendar: turned the pages
counted sixty-four, each page a move, checked
against replications, old books on chess,
each square contained a warning about change,
the kind we found ourselves in, drought and floods.
Ground ozone, knight takes bishop, save the queen.
East Antarctic Ice Sheet, protected pass.
Climate change, checkmate. Prophecy or Fate.
Each page, an image: chalice or oak box.
Words touched my fingertips and whispered songs
barely audible, something about a beggar boy
thrown into a rogue portal, transponder
emanating vibrations, Great Year calling:
Un coup de dés, Vega to Draco, jump!

Most of all, this book contains the lives lived by characters caught up in cataclysmic events, where individual heartache, love and loss take place on a ravaged earth. There’s even a little hope—in the kindness of the locksmith Bramah as she tries to save humankind from itself, and in the actions of the craftspeople making things to help humans survive.

Bramah’s Quest—shall we begin?

Delve deeper into Book Two: Bramah’s Quest