The Doldrums
Art/Perzine, Emily Bueckert, 26 pgs, butterguts.etsy.com, $5
Beginning in colour, ending in colour, and monochromatic in-between, Emily Bueckert’s The Doldrums is an exquisite zine, filled with melancholy narratives and poems.
Reading this zine mid-week during a heat warning, as I did, was very suitable. The atmosphere of this zine feels familiar in the sense that we’ve all gone through strange stages and have felt lost to ourselves, in whatever personal dimension that may be. It feels as if this zine was conceptualized while drinking a can of beer, exploring the endless path that the mind can travel during this act of consumption. The beer can, in colour, graces the first page. Filling the middle of the zine in black and white are everyday images such as shadows, trees, water, windows, buildings and skies; there is a distinct current running through them, as if Bueckert somehow charged them with a type of telepathic slow-release sadness and uneasy heartbreak.
I enjoyed the minimalism and simplicity of Bueckert’s words and images. Her poetry is extremely touching, fragile, and piercing. My favourite piece within Doldrums is ‘Rout’. It is visually packed with nuances and creeps in your skin. A beautiful coloured sketch of hands on the zine’s last page reminds you of how much our hands become the thing that literally and figuratively hold us.
Our vulnerability is planted in our palms, and Bueckert has stretched her hand open for us to see. (KK Taylor)