Joe Ridgwell’s Lost Elation is an object of such outrageous beauty one feels it should be handled with felt gloves, sat on a pillow of the finest Egyptian silk and have the pages turned by the breath from a soft sigh.
Kilmog Press are responsible for taking a collection of grubby impoverished waifs and strays from London’s battle scarred East End (and New Zealand) and rehousing them within such elegant and luxurious splendour: hand printed pages and unique dust jacket, hardback cover and limited to the criminally minuscule number of 50.
Beauty is not only page deep either, as whilst Joe’s poems or characters don’t fit the conventional stereotype, his art and skill is to reveal beauty lurking in unlikely places: a confused woman in park of drunks; in doomed kids playing football on council estates; in the triumphant aftermath of bloody encounters; and in two lovers shagging beneath the scream of midnight (yes, I'm thinking The Jam's "That's Entertainment" here). It’s in these places Joe’s search for the lost elation bears richly rewarding fruit. Seek and ye shall find.
Lost Elation by Joseph Ridgwell is published by Kilmog Press. Write to them at kilmogpress@hotmail.com for details.
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