Pins and Needles: Love Letters to a Dead Magician, by Colleen Bąk

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Name a magician, any magician… what is a name you associate with magic?

Chances are Harry Houdini flitted across your mind; perhaps in some state of undress, likely covered in any number of handcuffs or a straightjacket. Harry Houdini holds much intrigue as a character of history and an emblem of escape. Crowds upon crowds came to watch him die or fail and he triumphed night after night, year after year…and if he can, maybe just maybe you can, maybe we can all find the freedoms we need.

Pins and Needles is a tribute piece to the magician Harry Houdini. It plays with his history and the themes of magic and escape, which have made him appealing, engaging and relatable from his own time, to our current time and onward. We all could use a magical lift from time to time and the idea of escape is both culturally relevant and individually enchanting. Houdini whispers to the hope inside all of us that it is possible to break free; not just of chains and locks, but of self-limiting ideas and old habits; not just of straightjackets and boxes, but of myriad life circumstances and burdens of all kinds. He famously said, “my mind is the key that sets me free” and there is something primal, inspiring and simply asking for poetry in that belief. This little collection of poems is an invitation to both suspend and strengthen your beliefs about the possible, to indulge in a bit of magical thinking, to learn a little about Houdini and perhaps yourself too along the way.

Houdini has been an interest and inspiration of Colleen's throughout her life; and this only represents a small fraction of the poems she has written concerning him. Colleen has created a series of heavily collaged handmade zines with previous Houdini poems. She feels that placing this new collection into a more widely accessible chapbook is a fitting way to do her part in keeping his name alive, while celebrating the magic he continues to inspire. There is a timeliness and a timelessness to works regarding Houdini. His ongoing legacy is especially underlined by history as we exist in close proximity to the 100th anniversary of his passing on October 31, 2026.

Colleen Bąk is a neurodivergent poet and mom of three, who loves exploring the mysteries and magic of family stories, poetry and Houdini. She spent twenty years living in NYC; where after attending NYU for six years, she began attending births, throughout the city's boroughs (as a doula and a midwife's assistant) and tending to Houdini's grave, as one does when they have loved him since childhood. The city wilds will always be her home, but now she lives in fanciful proximity to the ocean, where she soaks in the salt air, like medicine, swims every chance she gets (thinking about sharks every single watery moment) and savors having actual space to move in. Regardless of location Colleen is always making sense of the world around her by writing poetry and embracing the magic in everyday life. Colleen’s poetry can be found in various anthologies and her previous chapbook breadcrumbs (2022, Bottlecap Press.)