When the filmmakers for Discovery Channel’s Shark Week wanted to capture a 4,200-pound great white shark jumping 5 feet out of the water, they chose to use a camera called the Phantom HD GOLD.
And when postdoctoral Fellow Jaswinder Bolina heard the name “phantom camera,” he knew he had a book title.
The book was originally titled Make Believe, but Bolina picked Phantom Camera as the final name when he heard the name on the Discovery Channel.
“I just like the phrase. In a photograph, everything is very solid and real as you see it,” Bolina said. “But the notion of the Phantom camera is that you take photos of things that are only halfway there, and you might not be seeing them correctly.”
Earlier this month, the collection of poems won the 2012 Green Rose Prize and $2,000.
The Green Rose Prize is held by New Issues Poetry & Prose, a publishing company established in 1996 and based at Western Michigan University. To enter the contest, one must have previously published a book of poems.
Bolina’s first book Carrier Wave was a winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Bolina said it’s a difficult book to understand because he tried to tell a story coming in bits and pieces, as he believed that things only make sense to us in memory because that’s the way we order them logically.
“His first book was very experimental and non-discursive,” said Mark Halliday, professor of creative writing and poetry. “During his years here, his poetry moved partway to a more discursive or narrative style.
Phantom Camera was part of Bolina’s dissertation for his Ph.D. in 2010, when Halliday was the director of the dissertation committee.
“He has a very strong poetic voice,” said Dinty W. Moore, professor and director of creative writing and a committee member for Bolina’s dissertation. “It was only a matter of time for the book to get published.”
sw454711@ohiou.edu
