Dual Realms
Samara Garfinkle
Chapbook
100 Copies - First Printing
ISBN 978-1-990474-07-1
Review: The Nelligan Review
"Samara’s poetry is a latticework of light and dark. Its tough cords wrench and tug, bear weight. Its bright filaments slice in and out, precious metals in the weave. In Dual Realms, the worldly and the otherworldly are (naturally) inseparable. Memory and dream, medical and mythical, cold hard truth and metafiction are unravelled and re-spun." —Frances Pope, author of The Brazen Forecast and Quarters
"Readers of old poetry and new will delight in the varying registers, early modern syntax, and detailed world-building that are the essence of each piece. The reader is left with an esoteric interpretation of the modern world, or else an imagined world whose politics, power, and even magic systems are naturally guided by loose codes of intuition, prediction, and cosmic love. A collection that celebrates the beauty of our own world and reality while questioning what may lie beneath it, Dual Realms is a gem that confronts both conscious and unconscious, male and female, mainstream and esoteric with poems that pulse, pray, and perform." —Jerome Ramcharitar, author of The Wrong Poem and Others Like It
Samara Garfinkle is a Montreal-based writer, classical soprano and voice teacher with a Master of Music from the University of Ottawa. She collaborates with pianist and composer Michael Darling in creating contemporary art songs set to the work of various poets, including herself (Darling & Garfinkle). Her poetry is published in Lantern Magazine, Columba Poetry, and Yolk Literary. Samara has been a facilitator for McGill’s Poetry Matters series and a featured performer in the QWF’s Words and Music Show, SpeakUp: The Montreal Interactive Poetry Exchange and The Lawn Chair Soirée. In 2022, Samara became the new host and co-coordinator of SpeakUp. She is currently pursuing a second bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Concordia University.