13 | Rules for Sadness | Jason Camlot

RULES FOR SADNESS
Vallum Chapbook Series No. 13
Jason Camlot

Through a blend of satire, wit and detachment, Jason Camlot’s Rules for Sadness refers to mourning and times of bereavement. Camlot takes the mundane, the innocent and imbues it with new meaning. He uses colloquialisms and surprising imagery to challenge and interpret contemporary notions of death and sadness. Anaphora reigns in this chapbook, and is perhaps even more powerful than Death. For Death personified often remains elusive: death “can’t sing…can’t paint…can’t play drums…can’t skateboard”. Loss is the topic here, and that which is lost is never made explicit. The use of non-referent pronouns says so little and yet so much, as do Camlot’s apostrophic letters to Death himself. And after all, through irony’s immortality, one finds that there is whimsy in death.

This chapbook is not available as a digital edition.