Hello friend! Today I am chatting with author Bernard Jan about his poetry book, Postcards From Beyond Reality, which is a companion to his novel, Cruel Summer. Let’s welcome Bernard and learn more about the book. You will also find a book excerpt after the interview. 🙂

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Get to know the author: Bernard Jan

Welcome back to Armed with A Book, Bernard! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

My pen name is Bernard Jan and I am both indie and traditionally published award-winning novelist and a poet from Croatia. I have released five books in English: A World Without Color, Look for Me Under the Rainbow, January River, Cruel Summer, and Postcards From Beyond Reality: The Selected Poems of Michael Daniels.

These books have one thing in common: they are emotionally charged, whether they are animal fiction novellas, coming-of-age and YA novels about friendship, abused teenagers and growing-up, or poetry.

My first two books in Croatian I wrote at the beginning of the war in Croatia in 1991 amidst air alerts and illusory attempts when I wanted to believe and think that life is normal, that everything is all right with the world.
Besides being passionate about books, I’m also an animal rights advocate and environmentalist. Helping others and spreading kindness, love, and empathy toward every living creature plays an important role in my life. As part of my animal advocacy activities, it has been a great honor for me to translate Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson into Croatian.

What inspired you to write this book?

My novel Cruel Summer inspired me to write this poetry book. I loved Cruel Summer (an odd thing to say for your own book, but it is true) and my protagonist Michael Daniels, who kept living inside of me even when I finished writing Cruel Summer. He was a poet, a skateboarder and abused teenagers in my novel, and I wanted to bring him to life outside the pages of Cruel Summer. This is how I wrote his book of poetry, Postcards From Beyond Reality: The Selected Poems of Michael Daniels.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

If I want to be honest, I don’t remember. I wrote these poems over twenty years ago and then a couple of them later before I translated them into English.

What makes your poetry collection unique?

I don’t know if there is a poetry collection written as a character from the author’s novel published so far. Or that poetry book like Postcards From Beyond Reality: The Selected Poems of Michael Daniels is a companion book to an actual novel. Does it make it unique? 😊

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

When I was writing these poems, I asked myself the same thing. I wasn’t sure who would like to read it, since I wrote it from the perspective and in character as an abused teenage skateboarder from New York City. Younger readers would be my first choice, but so far adults were the ones who have read and loved it. Both poetry lovers and readers who don’t read or love poetry have nice and kind words for my book, and that makes me thrilled.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

I hope readers would take away from this book the same thing I hope they would take away from my other books. A strong emotional experience, words that will stay with them and make them look for my other books. Emotion, passion, and vivid cinematic and visual experience are what I try to give to my readers through my books.

This is a companion to your novel, Cruel Summer. Can you tell us a bit about that book?

I’ll be happy to tell you a bit about my YA cross-genre novel Cruel Summer. Even though Cruel Summer doesn’t seem as personal as A World Without Color or life changing as Look for Me Under the Rainbow, it is my favorite book. I invested most of myself into research, plot, its characters, including one very emotional and heartbreaking episode from my life. Cruel Summer is a story about abused teenage boy, talented and very smart, who sought escape in poetry and skateboarding. Set in time-distorted version of New York City at the end of the millennium, it realistically describes lives of the group of local skateboarders. It speaks about the strength of their friendship that doesn’t buckle under even before the threat of the law, a brother-sister relationship, but also the authoritarian society where individuals get what they want no matter the price, which gives this novel a sci-fi dystopian feeling and atmosphere. 

But why skateboarders, someone might ask? Back then in late 1990s when I first wrote Cruel Summer in Croatian, skateboarding was something I was very much into. I even got my skateboard and tried to learn some basic tricks. And I stress the word tried. I am sure readers will feel my passion which radiates from my pages for this extreme sport, but it won’t distract them from the story and the messages it carries.

Why did you choose to make this companion? How does it support the novel?

Some poems from Postcards From Beyond Reality: The Selected Poems of Michael Daniels are already published in the Appendix to Cruel Summer, at the end of the novel. That is how I prepared my readers for the possibility of more poetry in a separate book. I had too many poems to publish them all in Cruel Summer, so the logical solution was to release a book of poetry. I had two reasons for that: to prolong the life of my novel through Michael’s poems and to find new readers who, after reading my poetry, will want to read Cruel Summer. 

From the reviews I’ve got so far, it supports the novel very well because even though these poems can be read independently, my readers advise other readers to read Cruel Summer before starting Michael’s poetry book to get to know him and his poetry better.

Do you have a favourite quote or poem in the book that you find yourself going back to?

There are a few poems which I have as my darlings: The East River Has Begun to Weep, Independent, Death Can Dance, . . . I’m Dying Into Eternal Life . . . , Awakenings, Michael’s Confession, to name just a few. And I better stop here before I mention the remaining poems too!

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Book Excerpt from
Postcards From Beyond Reality

bIRDHOUSE

Now—when it’s too late to change anything
turn back time and I retrace the footsteps that classified me as one of heartless and insensitive people
I can eat myself alive with anguish, misery, resentment, and guilt
for not picking up a dying pigeon with broken wings from the road
because I looked away from the endless pleading of an eye filled with painful agony
and I didn’t give water to the beak which without a sound cried out for drops of water I was carrying in
my backpack
in the spring heat
in the sea of passersby
car noise
with too little compassion
What would you do, Father, if I brought home a pigeon with broken wings
Would you step on him and with one swing crush what little life was still smoldering in him
enjoying the crisp sound of crushing remaining healthy bones
Or maybe I’m wrong
And you would build a birdhouse for him so he could always come back to you once healed
wake you up cooing and remain a faithful reminder of your goodness while having the strength to
perform another looping—in your honor
Build him a home just like you did it for me and lock him behind the net of secrets and sleepless fears
Every day, in the late afternoon, strollers would admire this beautiful birdhouse again
not knowing how much trauma was left lying hidden under the feathers behind the white-painted walls

tHE eND OF mE

This is the end of me.
The end of time,
One life I no longer wish to
soak up.
This is the end of innocence.
The end of fears, hopes, everlasting “understanding”
and childish dreams that—until now—
lived only inside of me.
The game is over—
And I couldn’t care less about anything
anymore.
I am back again!
With my feet firmly standing on this
sacred soil of mine,
Sucking my presence and my past into the
whirlwind of history.
This is the end of me.
I came here to die.
For I have started to live my very own
dream.

mICHAEL’S cONFESSION

It runs deep
Under the skin
In the droplets of clouds
Behind the halo of the moon
Under the rocks of humiliation
In the golden letters of a headstone
In the silent prayer of the earth
In Rebecca’s tears
In Alien’s eyes
In Victor’s generosity
Under the wheels of the skateboard
In runaway dreams
In pain, love, and defiance
Behind the walls of St. Luke’s Place
The truth about me

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Interested?

Find this book on Goodreads and Amazon.

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Connect with Bernard on his website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Bookbub, YouTube and Amazon.

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