ABCD 6th April
Artists’ Book Club Dove met on 6th April. We are making progress with our books for the Circle of Trees.
Caroline has been making blackberry ink and drawing with it.
Clare is well on the way, with minimalist prints and text, paintings, and collage.
Carol has re-made her lino-print and cut-out book, and a second book with cut-out pages only.
Pauline has made some beautiful Celtic-style hand-cut type.
Jane is struggling with her Holly-themed book’s tendency to look like a Christmas card.
Janine is making small books on Celtic themes.
I have made several more photo-poems.
Bron made delicious nettle soup and served it in her own hand-made dishes. So beautiful!
I think these willows at the Dove are offering ideas for masks.
Some of us went to BABE, the (Brilliant) Bristol Artists’ Book Event, at the end of last month, and my next post will be about that. Meanwhile, here is a link to Bob Bolick’s post. I do recommend this really excellent blog.
Also a link, as requested, to Anna Raven’s blog-post about saving bugs (and, by implication, us etc) from extinction. Anna’s posts are infrequent and always worth reading.
Finally, here are my rather lengthy eavesdroppings.
April Dove-droppings
it’s building an empire
entering the territory again
taking no prisoners
make it bleed
scramble across both pages
ok do what you want fine
there are stragglers
slow books
quirky in the quercus
batology is not the study of bats
they nest in the hollow stems
waiting for time
blackberry ink from Waitrose
a triangular idea
I’ve done it both sides
I do a whole thing on witches
insect life transformed
too much like a Christmas
to bleed or not to bleed
I redid the blind drawing
with a birchwood fastening
not too literal
foliage and a hospital bed
stages of growth and death
god told me not to
I am a deadline person
making it up as I go along
I know beetroot isn’t a tree
I had a tequila moment in a tent
I discovered a hidden talent
my fascinator had gathered
a couple of little umbrellas
a gin and a bit o’lemon
a whinchat has eyebrows
it’s got legs
there was a feather somewhere
would it look wrong
inappropriate and rubbish
we nearly talked about it
Posted by Ama Bolton on 18th April 2019
Of Trees and Tygers and Catastrophe
What an inspiring day! The March meeting of Bath Writers and Artists was co-chaired by Sue Boyle and Peter Reason. Sue began the morning workshop by reading a thoughtful and passionate essay by Chrissy Banks, “The Place of Poetry in a Time of Catastrophe”. Are we fiddling, she asks, while real people burn?
Peter introduced the Climate Lens Playbook, a tool for writers and performers, to help us effectively tackle this difficult subject. We heard four very different pieces of work from members of the group, and discussed them in the light of some of the precepts of the Climate Lens. Claire Coleman read Edwin Muir’s “The Horses“. We then performed, entirely without rehearsal or even reading in advance, three longer pieces. I had the pleasure of hearing, for the first time, part of a script I’m currently writing about the Circle of Trees at the Dove, read beautifully by nine volunteers. Eileen Cameron and five others read her compelling sequence “Giant Clam”, which I’d love to see in print as a mini-pamphlet. Lastly we heard “The Building of Kelston Barn”, a lovely collaborative poem, some of whose authors were present.
Peter rounded off the morning with two poems he had set to music.
The afternoon session was open to the public, who turned up in satisfyingly large numbers to fill the Elwin Room at Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute. The first speaker was Conor Whelan, current occupier of the Bardic Chair of Bath. Conor began with a recitation of Blake’s poem (above) and continued with stories and photos from his four months of teaching in a village school within Ranthambore Wildlife Sanctuary. I was left with the feeling that the slaughter of tigers by poachers will stop only when the demand for tiger body-parts ceases. The education of local children may help to ensure that they grow up with more in the way of career options than subsistence farming and poaching.
The afternoon programme was punctuated with songs from Miranda Pender.
Peter Reason introduced a showing of the film “Rise” a powerful collaboration between two poets affected differently by the effects of climate change, in Greenland and the Marshall Islands. This is the work that we hope will prompt new writing to bring to the 20th July meet-up.
Two short presentations followed, in which Ali Bacon introduced her novel “In the Blink of an Eye”, and Ann Cullis gave a slide-show with readings showing how the city of Bath has changed over the last few centuries.
Conor then performed his poem “Forget the Universe”, which led us into new ways of seeing the whole in its smallest part.
This was followed by Flory Wisdom and friends reading from her sequence of poems “The Weep of a City”, a stellar debut from a very young and very talented poet.
Lastly, Susan Jane Sims, known to us as the woman behind Poetry Space, read from her pamphlet “Splitting Sunlight“, written during her son Mark’s remarkable journey through terminal illness at a heartbreakingly early stage in his career as a doctor. I think we were just too choked-up to join in with Miranda’s reprise of “Where have all the Flowers Gone”.
I came home with an altered (less anthropocentric, I hope) perspective and a heightened awareness of “hyper-objects”: things that are everywhere but too big to see — like anthropocentricity and other habits of thinking and feeling that lead, not deliberately but inevitably, to disaster. I think I have already demonstrated that I can morph into a fictional post-apocalyptic unicellular extremophile, but it’s time to face the apocalypse head-on and do something about it. The expression it’s not the end of the world has gained a horrible new relevance.
Posted by Ama Bolton 25th March 2019
Two poems for my father
March 23rd
no-one else remembers
this was his birthday
I know he’s dust in the earth
a spark in a web of neurons
but I woke today with a shock
he has forgotten me
Incident in the Barents Sea
he never told me
but I learned the story
from his oldest friend
my father was twenty-three
and I four months in the womb
when his ship exploded
the life-raft was full
but someone sat on his fingers
hooked over the edge
sixty-one sailors were picked up
and given other men’s clothes
thawing such agony
they wished they had drowned
HMS Lapwing, escorting Russian Convoy JW65, was sunk by a U-boat
on 20th March 1945 with the loss of 168 lives.
PS. My good friend Bill has chided me for not “owning” my poems. And thanks, Bill, for spotting the weak line.
In future I’ll try to remember to sign these posts!
Ama Bolton
Bookbinding with Tom O’Reilly
I’ve got out of step with my blog-posts. This brilliant weekend workshop happened over a week ago in the Print Room at the Dove. As well as being a master book-binder and teacher, Tom is a writer, illustrator and musician. Read about him here. And about his band here. On both days he drove back to Cornwall for a gig.
Eight of us from the book-art group ABCD achieved more than seemed possible in two days of Tom’s teaching. Three books each! Two with hard covers and head-bands! One with a leather spine and raised bands! When people ask (they do, sometimes) what sort of books I made, I have always described myself as a coarse binder. Now I’ve had a brief taste of fine binding. I’m rather proud of my hand-dyed indigo book-cloth and end-papers, and the red glove-leather that clings to the spine like a tight-fitting evening gown.
Here are a few photos.
Finally, I want to mention that Nina is collecting the items below for recycling through TerraCycle.
ABCD 16th March
We met at the Dove last Saturday to review progress with this year’s big project on the thirteen trees of the Ogham tree calendar in the Dove Meadow.
Karen has been mono-printing for end-papers, and dyeing and embroidering on slub silk for book-covers.
Jane is using the old carol “The Holly and the Ivy” as a theme for her book. Here are two pages from her sketchbook.
Thalia has been closely observing and photographing Alder trees, and painting with inks derived from various parts of the alder.
Above: the colours of cut alder wood. Below: the life cycle of alder catkins.
Below left: lichens on alder trees. Right: birds among the catkins.
Below: painting with alder ink.
I have finally settled on making a book of A4 black and white oak tree photos with short poems. Here are two. I have made thirteen so far.
Janine has made progress with the embroidered panels for her tunnel-book. This photo does not do them justice. When held at the right distance apart they make a hazel wood you could lose yourself in –- unless you followed the path! Wildlife and other details are still to be added.
Judy has been experimenting with folded and sewn structures.
Judith has just come back from Singapore and is finding the Hawthorn to be a tree of opposites and contradictions; she has ideas for an epic dystopian poem about Huath the Destroyer. Watch this space!
Bron is doing experimental work combining etching and paper-clay. Again, watch this space.
Books, exhibitions etc recommended during the meeting:
Ireland’s Trees
Sacred Trees of Ireland
Botanical Dyes on Wood by Rebecca Desnos
Sculpture exhibition at the RWA until 2nd June
Belgian Chocolate Cheesecake from Aldi
Rough Guide (forthcoming) to the Liberation Route in Europe
Salisbury Cathedral has an exhibition Bookbindings Ancient and Modern in partnership with the Wessex Guild 2nd – 11th April, with a Discovery Day on 6th April.
Cut and Fold Templates
Next Meeting is on April 6th, when we need to bring a double-page spread for inclusion in our communal book, working title “Circle of Trees”.
March Dove-droppings
sculpted by the wind
the shadows are dancing
a sequence of decay
they cut down a whole wood
unlucky and protective
to build Salisbury cathedral
Penrith Marmalade Festival
totally unsuitable in my office
bend the tongue to get it in
the Bishop of Chichester
and in Bexhill-on-Sea
the Maharajah of Kooch-Behar
exactly like branding
gives off a poisonous gas
he’s not just the glue on the roller
not a footprint anywhere
I pulled up a beetroot
they often grow alone
do trees communicate in winter
a cemetery in the snow
defrost and eat
posted by Ama Bolton
If you’re in Bath next Saturday
There will be cake!
found poem: and when
Another beautiful found poem by Judy Kleinberg. Perfect for today!
