Uphill Picnic

Uphill Picnic is my first book of poems and maybe that’s why it’s so close to home.

As all things, it begins in the sea — where I am most me — and drags you along to all sorts of places I didn’t even want to be in myself, yet clearly felt the need to revisit in your company: my rural high-school, a game of football in the village square, watching my cousin Lila leave home after a fight with her mum, that patch of light where sorrow suns herself, the time I felt at peace with disparity, and of course, all the way uphill to attend a picnic.

Every single poem in this book has been a work in progress for the longest part of its existence. It has been an exercise both in restraint and in abandon. I see them as a series of reflections that finally came of age.

Lina Ozerkina is not only my designer, my publisher, and my friend, she is also an artisanal bookmaker who knows no match. Each cover is silk-screened and glued on by hand, each page lovingly folded and each book bound with the blue thread I didn’t even know I wanted.

I will of course be grateful if you attend my uphill picnic. Because of Lina, this book is not just my own modest effort to defy futility, but an artwork in its own right and, as such, I encourage you to buy it.”

— T. T.