Sesquipedalian Rain Chant
Brooks Lampe's first collection moves through a year shaped by rain, language, and belief — where domestic scenes and ancient voices meet in a poetic pursuit of clarity and transformation.
Sesquipedalian Rain Chant is the inaugural book of Ink & Ribbon Press. Rooted in the Pacific Northwest, the collection unfolds through rain, language, and attention — using weather not as backdrop but as a shaping force that moves through daily life.
Organized as a passage through the year, the poems begin in September and travel toward renewal. Religious and classical figures appear in kitchens, classrooms, trails, and letters written beneath gray skies. The result is a book that asks readers to linger, to listen, and to allow meaning to arrive gradually, as rain does.
"i have found what you are like
the rain" E.E. Cummings, Sonnets—Actualities: XVI
A year of rain, attention, and grace.
Sesquipedalian Rain Chant is the first poetry collection by Brooks Lampe and the debut publication of Ink & Ribbon Press.
Structured as a passage through the year, the book treats rain not as symbol but as action: dissolving certainty, interrupting habit, and returning attention to questions of love, faith, labor, and speech.
The poems move between domestic scenes and devotion, between contemporary life and ancient voices. Classical and spiritual inheritances are folded into lived experience without losing mystery, music, or emotional immediacy.
This is a collection for readers drawn to poetry that holds depth and mystery, and who are willing to be changed not by certainty, but by the steady persistence of rain.
- Title Sesquipedalian Rain Chant
- Author Brooks Lampe
- Publisher Ink & Ribbon Press
- Publication June 15, 2026
- Format Paperback
- Edition Limited to 250 copies
- ISBN 979-8-9946216-7-7
- Price $18.95
Ink & Ribbon's first book is a statement of intent.
As the inaugural publication of the press, this collection establishes the kind of work Ink & Ribbon exists to champion: serious, attentive, finely made poetry with a long life beyond the moment.
- Rooted in Oregon's wet seasons, the poems treat rain as a shaping force rather than mere backdrop.
- The collection moves through a liturgical and seasonal year, beginning in September and turning toward renewal.
- It brings spiritual, poetic, and philosophical inheritances into ordinary life without sacrificing intimacy or strangeness.
- It is Brooks Lampe's first full-length collection and the debut title of Ink & Ribbon Press.
Open the poems as if opening the book.
Three poems from the collection, presented in a quiet reading room that preserves their spacing, breath, and visual intention.
Le Chahut
A poem of color, motion, and social radiance — a strong threshold into the collection's sensibility and music.
Sappho
An invocation of eros, antiquity, and longing at autumn's door — intimate, intelligent, and immediately arresting.
fall on us
One of the clearest expressions of the book's weather-world: vulnerable, off-kilter, musical, and unmistakably of this collection.
Poems from the collection have already found readers.
Several poems from Sesquipedalian Rain Chant have appeared in literary journals, establishing the manuscript's voice within the wider conversation.
Shot Glass Journal
The Shore
The Dewdrop
Seasonal Fruits (3.2, Winter 2025–26)
The Wineskin
Utriculi 1, Sandy Press, 2024
Ballast Journal (4.1)
Half and One
Brooks Lampe
Brooks Lampe teaches literature, poetics, and creative writing. His scholarship explores the intersections of poetry, philosophy, literary history, and Surrealism, and his poems have appeared in journals including Utriculi, The Shore, Shot Glass, and Peculiar Mormyrid.
He is the poetry editor of Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal and edits the Substack Uut Poetry. Sesquipedalian Rain Chant is his first book.
Help bring the first Ink & Ribbon book fully into the world.
Sesquipedalian Rain Chant is published in a limited edition of 250 copies. Pre-orders support the making of the book, the life of the press, and the kind of careful poetry publishing that resists speed, scale, and disposability.