Scivias Choreomaniae
Lake Angela
ISBN 978-1-963908-16-9 154 pages $18.00
Scivias Choreomaniae is a danger to society. It exposes cadavers hidden from days
to decades ago—from the rotten skulls of doctors to the rotted bones of
prophets the medical staff held captive in their madhouses. This is Lake
Angela’s dance to the death, and you must enjoy it, and you must heed the holy
madness.
Georg Amsel, co-author
of Ein Seidennetz/ A Silken Net of Stars
and Lice
with Lake Angela
This is a book to satisfy those who seek poetry from outside
our familiar culture with all its assumptions and wants. Lake Angela brings a
modern sensibility to her writing while drawing on the medieval way image and
symbolism unite. Facing human issues common to all eras she has a ruthless
mysticism and is unafraid to think in terms of the soul’s struggle to survive.
She is equally secure at the social fringe with its asylums and hospital wards,
venturing to those for whom being understood is the first step to being healed. Scivias Choreomaniae is proof that
the age of visions is still with us and helping us see beyond the obvious.
David Chorlton, author of Speech Scroll
Lake
Angela’s Scivias Choreomaniae is a necessary, impressive collection chock-full of
holy visions and sharp beauty, of “horses [who] drink from the pouring wounds
of night,” “birds [who] cling to necks with stark feet and razor beaks,” and “flowers [who]
gleam scalpels through their golden eyes.” This gorgeous and generous sharpness
carries the pain of miscarriages and violence felt as a person who experiences
life as multiple. Open the book and flip your world: see how decay is “a
special kind of beauty;” the hawk, a savior; scorpion, a friend; serpent a
creature of god, and the patients at the insane asylum where Lake stayed as a
dance therapist—are prophets. At the asylum, you’ll learn how to fly like a bird
and dance rain as you “spill from your bodies.” Magic lives in this book. Scivias Choreomaniae is a world cracked open with possibilities. Lake will
convince you that cockroaches are mentors and in sleep we can “understand bird
sign.” Read these poems and you’ll be forced to step out from the world you
think you know. These poems are packed with the knowledge of multiple lifetimes.
Sara Ries
Dziekonski, author of Today’s Specials
Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer who creates at the confluence of verbal language and movement. Her other books of poetry include Organblooms and Words for the Dead from FutureCycle Press. She holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. Lake is an editor for the multilingual arts journal Punt Volat. She is a medieval mystic, beguine, and nonhuman creature. As director of the poetry-dance group Companyia Lake Angela, she presents the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity. She welcomes visitors and collaborators at www.lakeangeladance.com.
Abigail Parker
Jésica Cichero