The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors

Published through Montréal's Cactus Press, The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors is Jerome Ramcharitar's debut collection of poetry. Jerome Ramcharitar is a writer based in Montréal, Québec. Most of his days are spent teaching business English and occasionally causing more trouble as a poet. He has co-hosted a number of literary events, most notably Accent Open Mic and The Lawn Chair Soirée. His first chapbook, The Wrong Poem and Others Like It, was published with Cactus Press and won Expozine's Best Book Award in 2022. The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors is his first full-length collection. "As he guides you, slowly, carefully, through this gothic castle of a debut, full of shadowplay and mirrorshimmer, crawling with all manner of beasts, birds, angels and demons, and echoing with so many eerie, familiar, whispering voices, Jerome Ramcharitar opens a door to a realm of aesthetics seldom visited in twenty-first century poetry. The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors takes you to a place where the urban and the fantastical, the elemental and the savant, all mesh in a language plain and direct and yet highly symbolically charged. It's Gwendolyn MacEwen meeting you at the grocery store. It's you running into an eighth-century bard at a rave. It's a hugely impressive book written by a highly esteemed member of the Montreal writing community. To be read out loud and, chiefly, at night."-James Dunnigan, author of I Spurinna, and Windchime Concerto"The poems in Jerome Ramcharitar's The Riddle of Three Crimson Doors hinge on how we listen, interpret, and pass through language. By turns wry, sly, and elegant, Ramcharitar treats the riddle not as a puzzle to be solved but as a mode of thinking-one that activates mystery and multiplicity while sidestepping traps of mundane logic. With precision, lyrical control, and layered sonic texture, these poems transform philosophical inquiry into mulch, making cognition material: a living thing that prowls the page as animal, appetite, movement, blood, and breath."-Domenica Martinello, author of Good Want