RED ZONE
poems of homelessness & urban decay
by Kim Goldberg
September 2009
150 pages, 60+ photos
$18.95
By official estimates, three hundred people live and sleep on the streets of Nanaimo, British Columbia. On any given day, a percentage of these people are barred from a 40-block area of the city core known as the “Red Zone.” Kim Goldberg has spent the last three years verse-mapping and photographing Nanaimo’s back alleys, graffiti galleries, underpasses and homeless encampments.
In this extraordinary book, Goldberg reconstructs a landscape of urban decline through a stunning combination of poem, image, artist projects and journal entries until the city itself becomes a persona speaking to us in the samizdat of cities everywhere—graffiti. Goldberg’s tumble down the rabbit hole of broken glass and shattered lives ultimately lands her in her own smouldering red zone of passion, obsession and shame.
“I can no longer discern where the political ends and the personal begins. The deeper I push into this swollen red midden of hidden box springs and open books, the more my own flesh burns…”
—from RED ZONE
Take the journey with her, if you dare.
Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet, journalist and author of six books. Her work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies around the world. She has lived in Nanaimo for more than thirty years.
ISBN 978-0-9783223-7-3
150 pages
$18.95 (Canadian or US)
Contact: goldberg@ncf.ca
