by Jenna Brignoly
The spring book launches continued on April 27 with a stunning new collection of poetry and photography titled Beyond the Gate: Poetry and Photography by Doug Jordan and Sidney Shapira. As always, Jessica Smithies did a wonderful job creating a welcoming environment and facilitating discussion afterwards.
Sydney Shapira was joined by his wife in greeting guests and offered refreshments to all. Co-author Doug Jordan was unable to attend the reading.
Nevertheless, Shapira provided lively readings of both author’s poetry and sent around copies of the book so audience members could view the photos connected to the poems. His talent for poetry reading extends beyond his work as audience members learned of his background not only as a young performer at Rainbow Stage, but as a Winnipeg teacher.
Moving into question period, it became apparent several different aspects make Beyond the Gate stand out from other books hitting the shelves. As emphasized on the cover this book, it is a collection of both poetry and photography. When asked which came first, the photos or the poem, Shapira drew on the other unique element of the book: his co-author status. The collaboration between him and Jordan, his high school drama teacher, is an interesting pairing that began during Covid when they reconnected on Facebook.
In their first book together, The Gate and Other Poems on a Life’s Journey, Jordan wrote all the poetry and Shapira took all the photos. However, as Jordan began writing poetry for Beyond the Gate, he insisted that Shapira include poetry of his own, as well as the stunning black and white photos. As Beyond the Gate proves, Shapira was more than up for this task. Both Jordan and Shapira demonstrate their amazing ability with words in this moving collection.
Beyond the Gate covers a wide variety of topics from dealing with chronic pain and Parkinson’s to living in Winnipeg and dreaming of Paris. Shapira shared that often he and Doug were able to find overlapping topics within their poetry to group elements of the collection together, however, that did not mean they shared the same opinion on those topics. For instance, Paris holds a special place in Shapira’s heart while Jordan prefers Winnipeg’s streets, creating an interesting dynamic between the two authors’ poetry.
Finally, bringing both the book and the reading to an end, Shapira read the first and last poem of the book. The first poem is written by Jordan and the last by Shapira; however, both poems take their name from the title, Beyond the Gate. This final reading was beautiful and drew in one final city, Victoria, to the novel.
As guests filtered out, they had the opportunity to purchase a copy of Beyond the Gate and Shapira stayed to sign them all. Beyond the Gate can be purchased on Amazon or through Friesen Press.