Purple Forbidden Enclosure | Permafrost Magazine

New Alchemy

Introducing our 2020 New Alchemy winner...

Purple Forbidden Enclosure, by Monica Ong

Full view of Purple Forbidden Enclosure, a silver and gold printed letterpress on imperial blue cover stock using constellations as an experiment for the layout of a poem

Black and white version of Purple Forbidden Enclosure, a circular depiction of constellations with poetry transcribed over top

Purple Forbidden Enclosure, 2019. Gold and silver foil stamping, letterpress print on Colorplan imperial blue cover stock, 12 x 18 inches.

Produced in collaboration with Boxcar Press. Photo documentation by Tom Virgin.

Purple Forbidden Enclosure, a letterpress broadside printed in gold and silver foil using constellations as an experimental poetic form | Photo Documentation by Tom Virgin

Purple Forbidden Enclosure image, head on | Photo by Tom Virgin

Detailed shot of Purple Forbidden Enclosure | Photo by Tom Virgin

Detailed image of the gold and silver stamped letters on the dark blue paper of Purple Forbidden Enclosure | Photo by Tom Virgin

What is New Alchemy?

We at Permafrost put out a call for new and innovative approaches to the creative process. We asked for your experiments: with language, with plot, with format, with medium. We wanted to read/see/hear your most exciting and daring projects, your collaborations, your darlings that don’t fit anywhere else, your basement-dwelling monsters revealed in all their grotesquery onto the medium of your choice. Anything went. Thus, New Alchemy was born.

“In all the houses keys to memorizing objects and feelings had been written. But the system demanded so much vigilance and moral strength that many succumbed to the spell of an imaginary reality, one invented by themselves, which was less practical for them but more comforting."Gabriel García Márquez , One Hundred Years of Solitude