A. MOLOTKOV'S
LITERARY PROJECTS

Not From Around Now (Poetry for a Small Choir)

This book was a project in two stages.  First, the poetry was written.  It took only a few months in 1998, as I scribbled these verses in my notepad on the way to work and back, and in other locations in San Francisco.  The idea was to build a book that has a sense of continuity, rather than just a stiff collection of disparate poetry.  And so it became a book of poetry about life, death, the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and how art comes into all of it.  Certain motifs reoccur, certain parts of the text repeat – the book starts on page -57 and takes you across 0 all the way through to page 57.  The Inbetweenword on page 0 further explains the conceptual foundation of “Not From Around Now”.   

And so, I had my first book of poetry in my hands.  (My poetry from earlier years is intermingled with prose in my book “A Reflection of Shadows’ Eyes”.)  There was a lot of space still left on the pages.  Shortly before, I had obtained a digital camera, and the idea sprung to mind: to do an illustrated edition of the book.  The illustrations, based on my digital photography, were created using a variety of software tools, resulting in a conceptually and technically diverse visual layer added to the poetry.   

Interestingly enough, “Not from Around Now” later received its third incarnation – my debut solo CD “Can You Stay Forever?”, based on the poetry from the book.  The CD was released in 2005.