ABCD at midsummer
Eleven of us met at the Dove on Saturday to see what progress we’d made with our Ogham tree books. Most of the books have already been described here, so I’ll just show a few new works for the Ace Gallery exhibition.
Judith could not be with us – she is in Tanzania I think – but she sent me this image of paper contact-dyed with hawthorn leaves, along with some interesting ideas for a script of thorns …
Thalia (Alder) has made seven little books and a box to house them,
and a resource book/sketchbook.
Clare (Ash) has made a book for her poem about bringing the woodland to a friend in hospital.
Here is a withy-bundle from Karen, showing several different coloured varieties of willow and tied with the traditional rose-knot.
Bron is making a large (33x40cm) book of seven etchings, with letterpress-printed text on the facing pages. Here are some of them drying.
Jane has been on a course at West Dean, making cyanotypes on paper and linen cloth. She has printed her mokuhanga illustrations for the Holly and the Ivy; they are really special, in soft glowing colours. Janine has made a couple of small books to complement her Hazel tunnel-book, and has started a book with silk-paper pages dyed a luscious lettuce-green. Carol brought her wonderful travel sketchbook. Caroline brought a prototype of the collective book we’ll be putting together at the Dove at our next meeting on 13th July. Pat has been getting inspiration from a gorgeous book from the Natural History Museum. It has illustrations of all the Waterhouse botanical ceiling panels. The price has been reduced to £5: a real bargain.
Lunch was a treat.
And some of us went out to see the orchids in Whitefield. Another treat!
Masses of Pyramidal and Southern Marsh orchids, several Bee orchids and a few spikes of the green-flowered Twayblade that springs from two oval leaves at ground-level. Meadow Brown and Common Blue butterflies, grasshoppers and various bees. We learned from one another. Pat noted that none of the Bee orchids we saw had yet been pollinated. Clare pointed out a bumble bee who, too burly to reach the nectar in a Comfrey flower, was cutting a hole in it. The Yellow Rattle is all going to seed, and we were too late for the Butterfly orchids. Meadows like this are so precious. I gave silent thanks to the spirit of Patrick Whitefield.
Here is my found poem cobbled from fragments of the day’s conversations.
June Dove-droppings
a collection of cauldrons
and a few small flexi-things
soaked in fish soup
unravelled lobster-pot rope
iron makes it very dark
could it be more blue
in the sea for a long time
they pulled her out of the loch
but she’s disintegrated
I went to Sorrento on a school trip
I went to the local gasworks
I asked them not to come with ideas
borrowed keys and sprockets
hand-painted birds and animals
a cork and sealing-wax
the Western mind is trained
to set the colophon again
it seems to me quite normal
I do a lot of hanging
last-minuting
I was printing at 4am
they lose their hollyness
without the pines and the poplars
in the garden at 8 o’clock eating roses
very sticky glue in a squirty bottle
and a bit of bryony out of the hedge
performing like a flashmob
Back to books …
Everything I write these days has trees in it.
I enjoyed making “Oak” so much that I went on to make a second book of photo/poems, “And Other Trees”. Both are one-off books (too expensive to reproduce at an affordable price, but individual A4 prints will be available to buy) and will be shown at our ABCD exhibition (31 August – 7 September) at ACE gallery in Somerton. I want to acknowledge here that in this project I have been inspired by the example of Dave Bonta’s videopoems and his Woodrat Photoblog.
I received this photo (below) this week. It shows two of my handmade books feeling at home in very good company in Sebastopol, California.
I blogged about “Between two Moons” – the one on the upper shelf – extensively in 2017, but I’ve been reticent about “These Last Months” because it is so personal. The critic on my shoulder tells me that no-one wants to read stuff like this. A wise mentor told me otherwise. So I compromised: I have made an edition of 25 copies. I will be reading from it for the first time in public at BRLSI in Queen Square, Bath, at an open meeting of Bath Writers and Artists at 2pm on Saturday 29 June. This is a free event, with free tea and cake! Do come if you’re in the area.
Finally, some news of free bookbinding workshops at ACEarts, Somerton, during Book Week June 25-29.
With thanks to funding from Somerset Skills & Learning all workshops are free – please note we are only able to offer one workshop per person but welcome you to go onto the reserve lists for other workshops.
Tuesday 25 June: Coptic binding with Nina Gronw-Lewis
Coptic binding is favoured by many artist book makers as it allows a book to lie completely open when flat. Being an open spine binding it showcases the decorative stitching across the spine. 10.30-1 pm and 2-4.30 pm
Wednesday 26 June: Hardback books with Donna Vale (must have book experience)
Learn how to make your very own hardback book for sketching or writing in. We will use traditional methods to create a bespoke journal. 10-5 pm
Thursday 27 June: Boxes for books with Paul Taylor of Spiral Path book studio.
10-4 pm
Friday 28 June: Artists’ books with meaning. Jenny Graham
Create a simple folded book using image, collage and print. 10-4 pm
Saturday 29 June: Hand lettering workshop with Donna Vale.
Working in Modern calligraphy, hand lettering, beautiful writing and illustration to create a one off work of art. 10.30-3.30 pm
To book a place, contact hello@acearts.co.uk to book
Posted by Ama Bolton on 11th June 2019
From the city of wells to the city of bridges
We spent a marvellous bank Holiday weekend in Brugge/Bruges with our daughter and her partner, who have been there many times. A lovely city surrounded by water. There were banners in many languages celebrating the forthcoming Procession of the Holy Blood. The weather was too nice to spend much time indoors, so we left the museums and galleries for another visit.
Peter and I took the Halve Maan brewery tour while Mary and Jan had some beer. The views from the roof are spectacular. The beer is transported in a pipeline under the city to a modern bottling plant somewhere on the horizon.
Mary and I decided to climb the 366 steps to the top of the Belfort (bell tower) in the central square. While we waited our turn to go in, people started assembling in the courtyard. It was a rehearsal for the next week’s procession.
We were almost the last visitors to be let in that day. We looked down at the square from the first balcony, then climbed up and up to the Drum Room, the clock, the bells, and the amazing views from the top, where inscriptions on the windowsills told us what we were looking at and how far away it was.
Then it was a long descent by the same spiral staircase, which changes direction twice as it approaches the top. Here is the Belfort from below.
The city is small enough to walk around in a few hours. It’s very clean and has plenty of parks and open spaces and tree-lined walks. Heavy traffic is excluded during the day. Long-wheelbase bicycles can transport whole families. Huge barges carry massive loads. The bridges at the perimeter of the old city are heavily fortified.
We drove to Ostend for lunch on the Sunday. This grand old building squished between new blocks on the sea-front caught my eye.
When in Brugge, it is necessary to buy chocolate.
Big thanks to Mary and Jan for organising the travel and accommodation and doing all the driving – and for introducing us to one of their favourite places.
ABCD May meeting
The first two show Janine’s embroidered tunnel-book Hazel Walk.
Next, Clare’s Ash.
Jane’s book, inspired by the carol The Holly and the Ivy.
One of Thalia’s Alder booklets.
And another.
Karen (Willow)
Caroline (Bramble)
Some prints by Bron.
Two double-pages for our collective book: the introduction, and Judy’s page.
And a couple of images of my book Oak.
Our next meeting will be on 22nd June.
Clare kindly scooped up the May Dove-droppings for us.
three monsters flowered
at the weeping spot
that’s what perpetuates the whole thing
the tree that bleeds
loose-leaf etchings
the leaves were picked for us
hand-stitching over each twig
when you’re not being watched
we weren’t allowed to
I couldn’t remember the direction
I have to put it in upside down
at night you don’t see that
soya milk to mordant cloth
how many I’ve had to make
we’re all a bit fuzzy
buttered willow and boiling beetroot
mice nibbled mine
from pale to deep
all the loud people
called out of Latin
to look after my jackdaw
this book has my intentions
the whole rigmarole of the story
it changes shape
one chapter is missing
the cones are still growing
such small pieces
the cover is the first thing
trust the printer
make more bundles
sit on their shoulders
longing to see the inside
the field has to be seen
I don’t need a name
look at your nettle
I’m wilting inside
don’t come
start with the book-book
a fox trotting along the fence
If you’re in Bath on 1st June
Then please come to the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute in Queen Square in the centre of Bath. Members of the Bath Writers and Artists will be gathered in the Lonsdale Room (upstairs) 1.45 to 4.30pm. There will be tea and cakes! Performances and slide shows! And a chance to see a few of my new photo-poems from And Other Trees.
The event is completely free.
found poem: sooner or later
Here’s another of Judy Kleinberg’s found poems that very much hits the spot.
Harness of Bone
I am proud to announce a new book forthcoming from Barleybooks
Sometimes I look for a plowed field to walk through
the earth turned over in such a way
that I might recognize some root
of my own memory
… …
I read in the newspaper
of an eight year old
in a refugee camp
who talked of suicide
in a quiet ordinary voice
— two extracts from Who Might We Ask, the first of twenty-seven new poems in this twelfth collection from San Francisco poet and activist Beau Beausoleil. The cover image by Somerset artist Fiona Hingston beautifully matches the wintry starkness and clarity of these poems with their themes of heartache, rage and transcendence.
Here are beautiful laments for the lost ones—parents, a son, an eight-year-old refugee who talks about suicide “in a quiet ordinary voice.” Beausoleil’s direct, declarative syntax and precise images hold our private and collective griefs in ways both vivid and mysterious.
– Julie Bruck, winner of the Canada Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry 2012
I can’t say what makes [Beausoleil’s] work so good, which is a good part of what makes it remarkable. I think it starts with [his] qualities as a person. And from there, the lines … do such interesting things … They express the abstract and the concrete at the same time.
– Eric Whittington, owner of Bird & Beckett Bookshop, San Francisco
Let me speak of this book through one of its poems: In “The Precise Moment,” the poet, overcome, again, by loss, begins to weep in the middle of the post office where he is waiting in line to buy stamps. It is, as is this book, a portrait of the way grief is nothing, then suddenly, all, compelling our tears from their beds the way the moon pulls, as Beausoleil writes, at the sleeve of the ocean. But as grief comes, this book teaches, so comes the poem to reply, to continue past breakage and loss — to live.
– Richard Harrison, winner of the Canada Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry 2017
Hand-stitched pamphlet, 6″x8.5″, 44 pages, edition of 200
To be published June 2019
Price until 31st May £10/$15 p&p free
Price after 1st June £10/$15 plus p&p at cost
Inquiries: Americas and Canada: overlandbooks@earthlink.net
UK and rest of world: barleybooks@hotmail.co.uk
