Midnight Cargo by Kevin Basl

Midnight Cargo mixes journalistic observations, sorrowful musings, and surreal dark humor as readers glimpse the Iraq War through the mind’s eye of a veteran attempting to find meaning through darkness and confusion. These loosely interlinked stories and poems together create a hybrid narrative of collective memory, covering multiple perspectives: US soldiers, veterans, citizens of Iraq, protestors, even an unmanned drone.
 
Kevin Basl lives near Ithaca, NY. He was in the US Army from 2003 to 2008 and twice deployed to Iraq as a mobile radar operator. He has taught writing and papermaking workshops for veterans and their communities for over a decade. Visit www.kevinbasl.com to explore more of his work.
 
“Kevin Basl’s poetry and short stories take you to Iraq and back—stirring up soul-churning thoughts, like those that haunt soldiers and sometimes, abruptly, through Kevin’s creative craft, humanize veterans of the War on Terror, their adversaries, and civilians caught in the crossfire.”  

—Jan Barry, award-winning journalist, poet, and co-editor of Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans
 
 
Midnight Cargo Dimensions:
8.5" x 5.5"
105 pages with 4 illustrations
Letterpress printed section breaks
Handmade paper endsheets with cotton rags and military uniforms
Handbound in a casebinding with a cloth spine and raw boards. Dust jacket digitally printed
 
More work by Kevin Basl:
Corn, Coal, and Yellow Ribbons from Out of Step Press is a collaborative chapbook with poems by Kevin Basl and Nathan Lewis. Its cover is letterpress printed on paper made from pulped military uniforms. To learn more and purchase, please visit Etsy.
 
To learn more about Kevin's writing process for Midnight Cargo, his creative practice, and future projects check out this interview.