Congratulations to Philip Gross

I would like to lie and say that this was a photograph I took this very morning to catch the moment when the poet was told that he had won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry for 2009 but, apart from fear of my nose growing long, the scene of Summertime outside the window makes the idea not entirely convincing!

Rather, the photograph was taken at an earlier moment of rejoicing for us, namely when Philip Gross and Peter Reddick sat down together to sign the copies of The Abstract Garden which I had finished printing a short time before.



To remind our friends of this book, here is a photograph of the Titlepage and just one of the page openings each of which consists of a poem, a wood engraving and their careful position together on the page.

More can be found out about this this book (one of our greatest favourites, I have to say) by clicking on this link.






But the excitement of this day is, of course, is Philip's triumphant winning of the T.S.Eliot Prize for his book The Water Table, published by Bloodaxe.

The following is taken from a press release from The Poetry Society:-

The judges of this year’s Prize, Chair Simon Armitage, and fellow-poets Penelope Shuttle and Colette Bryce, reached their decision after months of deliberation and debate. The winner was chosen from a field of ten highly-regarded poets.


Simon Armitage said:

“A book of great clarity and concentration, continually themed but always lively and alert in its use of language. Gross takes us from Great Flood to subtly invoked concerns for our watery planet; this is a mature and determined book, dream-like in places, but dealing ultimately with real questions of human existence.”

I know I promised. . .

. . . but it seems to have taken over everybody's lives!

Just as the first lot of snow was showing slight signs of beginning to melt away, there was a grand encore (especially dramatic in this part of the world) which revealed this lot as morning broke yesterday and before the deer and the foxes and the badgers and all the multitude of birds had tramped all over it. Even I had to admit that it was was looking rather magical so out I went to capture a few shots.




















All my life, I have had the reputation of being a grouchy old grump when it comes to snow. I have never really worked out why but it seems to addle my head. I suffer from disorientation that comes from a type of sensory deprivation and creative thought (or anything but the lowest level of mental activity, eg filing) is quite impossible for the duration.

Outside, as I write, there is quite a convincing sound of dripping so I am daring to hope that real life may be restored to me before too long and that I may be able to embark upon all the tasks that await the restoration of my faculties.

And I might even get back to blogging . . .

A Very Happy Christmas!

Snow finally fell last night and enabled me to post this 'card' to all of our friends at this festive time of the year. I do, however, promise to spare you any further snow photos. We have, I reckon, had many too many this year already!

Just a bit of fun! Be your own J*****n P*****k

Progress with "The Plague"

Martyn Grimmer, the master printer charged with the printing of Angela Lemaire's etched plates for the publication described earlier on this Blog - HERE, has just said that he is about halfway through the project and will finish in December. We have not yet been too specific about how we are going to republish this fascinating project so watch this space!

Martyn has also sent these enticing photographs of completed prints and one of the plates and I hasten to post them here. The plate in these photographs looks to me more like part of the Mask of Agamemnon than something to print from!

You know about the Partridge in a Pear Tree,

. . . well, here is a Pheasant in an Apple Tree!

And here is a less than perfectly successful attempt to capture his exit from the scene!

A change of scene

We decided to take ourselves away for a couple of days to try to rid ourselves of some accumulated end-of-summer-that-hardly-was glooms. Partially successful only, to be honest, but I was happy to return with some of the inevitable camera full of photographs . . . of which these are a proportion.

I somehow feel they are different from my usual (blowsy, romantic!) style and that they rather reflect my mood . . . or perhaps that is simply my take on things.

If you can spare the time, do click them bigger for they seem to want as much space as they can get, as do I!

They are not intended to provide memories of particular places but, for the record, we were in Lyme Regis, Portland and Cerne Abbas - all in the county of Dorset.
































































































. . . and finally

a photograph of Frances reprising her end-of-the-pier triumph in the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days!

It must be Autumn

First of all, an early morning spider's web taken just before we went to London for the shenanigans described below and when, if I am honest, I was having my usual 'missing you already' feelings about this place before leaving it even for a couple of days!

The remaining images, taken today, are by way of being a homage to those of my favourite neo-romantic painters who gave me such frissons as a youngster by putting seedheads in the foreground of their landscape paintings (eg Alan Reynolds). So often these echoed the hard angularity of the sculpture of that age and contrasted thrillingly with the softer shapes and textures of the spaces behind.

Fun and Games at The Whitechapel Gallery

The McDowalls stepped out of their hotel and were assailed by wafts of warm air bearing scents of exotic food preparation and the sounds of multifarious city life. Had they returned to Italy for another holiday? Sitting down for a pavement breakfast, Frances sips her coffee while I turn 90 degrees in my seat to snap the Duomo . . . or rather the Gherkin, almost as impressive in its way! It was pretty well our first visit to this part of London since it had become a centre d'animation in so many ways, and it happened to be a gloriously sunny and almost hot end of September.


NOT a holiday, in fact, but a pleasant prelude to a three-day stint in The Whitechapel Gallery where we were showing our wares at The London Art Book Fair.



This was a 'new' event although it was the development of a number of fairs that had happened in former years. The Fair was hectic throughout but in a good way. We were most pleased to have met (and often talked at length to) people we had not met before in any form. Especially happy to meet young designers and printmaking students who clearly liked the books we make when they could have been expected to look askance at objects so clearly NON-trendy.




This event marked the first public appearance of EQUUS (see major post below) and the book was much admired. It had been planned that, at the start of the Fair, there would be a small gathering of people who had been concerned, especially Clive Hicks-Jenkins, the artist, and Callum James whose chance remark to us had started this particular quadruped galloping!




This shows Clive (in the centre) with Peter Wakelin and, on the right of the photograph, the unmistakeable figure of Simon Callow.



Simon Callow has been a friend of Clive's for some years and he helped the artist during his work on the many images for the book with much thoughtful comment . . . especially while Callow was actually taking the part of Dr Dysart in the production last year that toured the country.




He had much of interest to say here as well and we were very grateful that he had found time to visit this newborn book . . . and to turn some heads in the Gallery!