A Tourist In Troubled Times?

Strange Currencies, a collection of poetry from Daniel Sendecki, is now available from Ahadada Books. It consists of prose and poems that chronicle the author's travels throughout Asia in 2002.

"It's not travel writing in the strictest sense," explains Sendecki, it is a portrait of the self seen through the prism of other cultures, cities, and histories." Sendecki moved to Kwangju, South Korea in 2001 where he taught at Chonnam National University. That job, and the adventures that followed in Asia, led to Strange Currencies.

The poems contained within Strange Currencies were immediate responses, akin to verbal Polaroids, and were often scribbled on anything the author had at hand: train timetables, air-sickness bags, and the margins of guidebooks. "About once a week," says Sendecki, "I would collect what I had, find a computer terminal somewhere, and transfer everything into an email -- sharing it with a circle of poets from many different countries: Thailand, Japan, & Korea". Via email these expats discussed the strange cultural gap they were occupying. What emerged was a book that found itself in the peculiar position of interpreting the West while trying, at the same time, to understand the East.

"Sendecki is an intrepid translator of a self dislocated by travel, language, culture, and experience," writes Winnipeg writer, critic, and managing editor of Trout Lily Press Charlene Diehl-Jones, "[his book] moves us through exotic locales, always reminding us of the compelling vibrations of home, the place we forever seek. It's a great trip."

Daniel Sendecki was born in 1975 in Montreal, Canada. He studied at the University of Waterloo (B.A., 1998) before receiving his Master's Degree in English Language and Literature from Queen's University in 2000. "Strange Currencies" is his first book.

Ahadada Books is a small press first begun by Jesse Glass in 1999, publishing titles both online and in print. The aim of the press is to present new writers and literature that, to paraphrase Francis Pacabia, speak with you, envelope everything, and belong to every religion. They present broadsides, limited-run chapbooks, and perfect bound books of diverse literary forms.

For ordering information, to request review copies and for information on upcoming appearances please visit the Ahadada Books Website.