This poetry Chapbook uoiea by Franco Cortese and above/ground press, honours the state of love with the creation of a new language as if recreating a pristine state of sacrament in the New Age Renaissance Republique of Poetry. Franco Cortese lives and works in Thorold, Ontario. He is an experimental Poet and is widely published in The Capilano Review, filling Station, Eunoia Review, ditch, Canadian Literature, The Operating System as well as the mainline press The Blasted Tree, nopress, Penteract Press, Spacecraft Press, Simulacrum Press amongst others.

The Poet writes "uoiea is a suite of multilingual lipogramatic poems that eschew the use of all consonants." Cortese borrows from Swahili, Rapa Nui, Hawaiian, "pinyin" and "romaji" (transcriptions of Chinese and Japanese) to create an exciting pictograph with an English translation. The poetry itself is a brilliant Beat poetry progression. The theme of the poem is an exploration of broken emotional ground, the broken sacramental bond of marriage. The poetry existing in current memory as an honouring of the wound.

The idea of creating a new language in poetry is a celebrated concept, Christian Bok in Eunoia is famous for playing with and reworking the English language in exciting new ways. One of the first plays at a new language concept is the science fiction classic A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess that comes complete with a glossa in the back, not unlike reading a Shakespearian play. In uoiea the entire language is thrown out and reinvented with English translations, an original play at sanctification through poetry.

Images of life in love are juxtaposed with images of death, nature imagery in putrification and disease, the idea of ashes, a burnt offering are contrepoint with the idea of pregnancy, new life and the ever-present image of water, the purification, the cleanse.

"to whiten

thorn:
I am
nothing,
upward
smoke
to sew
water
current
:ceremonial purification."

Some of the English translation writing is presented in 2 columns, this creates a very exciting concurrence where the poetry can be read up and down and/or across. Reading across brings a brilliant nuance, expanding the poetry into interstellar rounds.

A consecration by water imagery, the poetry is resplendent for healing synergies, a pushing of the bounds of traditional poetry that is an exciting event in the New Age Renaissance Republique of Poetry, uoiea by Franco Cortese.