Ill Weathers & Other Fates

In Ill Weathers & Other Fates, Blair Hamelink explores the floodgates of a tempestuous world he has conjured, blending characters real and surreal, such as Hart Crane, Ophelia, Tilikum, and an array of rainy-day women. While in concert with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in this work, Shakespeare’s sorcerer of weathers, Prospero, has been recast as 'the garrulous us, all bark, built like a fleet of doldrums in rue.' Blair’s speaker observes a sudden change in the weather, and remorse echoes throughout. The title is a play on a line from The Tempest: 'It is a foul weather in us all.' That foulness has turned into an illness, internally in the psyche and externally in meteorology. In this chapbook, water is memory, celebration, and the end. With a strong appreciation for the elegy, this work rhythmically plays with grim tides and fates but is also divine, lighthearted, surreal, and humorous.