… who over at his poetry site Via Negativa has been making erasure poems.
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Erasure poem by Dave Bonta derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 17 May 1660.
The king is naked and mad,
the queen wagers the whole world
on heaven—a strange country.
I hide in a wagon
with one horse.
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Lettering and image drawn from my recent work on The Soldier’s Tale.
Over at Marly Youman’s Thaliad page on Facebook, there has been handsome praise for the book from author/illustrator James Artimus Owen.
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J A O: It (Thaliad) was one of the few books I’ve purchased in recent years that I think was executed flawlessly, in every way.
M Y: Oh James, thank you! That’s so, so lovely. I shall have to share that with Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Beth Adams. Collaboration with them is beautiful. I just hope it manages to keep moving out in the world.
J A O: It’s a high water-mark of what’s possible, Marly. It’s old-school book-crafter perfect.
M Y: Ah, that is so sweet to hear. Thank you. “Perfect” and “high-water-mark” are very satisfying words!
J A O: It’s all sincere. With that book you leapt from being one of my favourite writers to a game-changer. The literary sphere will have to catch up to what I and others have already seen – but there is no doubt it is a remarkable achievement.
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Thaliad is available as a paperback or hardback, and may be purchased from the following sites.
Order from the Phoenicia Publishing online store
Order from Amazon.com
Order from Amazon.UK
Order from Amazon Europe
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… the floor is littered with drying book-plates for Marly Youman’s Thaliad, awaiting only a trimming. (The air at Ty Isaf is ripe with the smell of oil-based printing-ink and white spirit.) These were promised over at Phoenicia Publishing to the first fifty purchasers of the book, and I regret to report that I’ve been unforgivably tardy over getting the job done. Still, they’ll be off next week. I’ll send all the ones for recipients in the US to Marly or Beth for re-posting, but shall forward the UK bookplates directly. Apologies to everyone for my slowness with this. I’ve been away in the Land of the Mari!
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Above: trying out a print made on coloured paper in another Marly Youmans book, The Foliate Head. The turquoise looks pleasingly jazzy against the red endpapers. I’ll cut a rubber-stamp for my name, as I think the chunkiness of the relief print needs bold lettering for ‘Hicks-Jenkins’ in the space at the bottom. And as I’ll be using this plate in many of my books, a stamp will move things along a bit.
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Elizabeth Adams to Clive Hicks-Jenkins: 15 June 2012 15:52:42 GMT+01:00
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‘Dear Clive, Thaliad will be 6 inches wide by 9 inches high. I haven’t decided yet if we’ll do a hardcover edition as well; I’d like to. The one I did for Dick Jones’ Ancient Lights worked out well, and since this will be a special book — and is, after all, an epic in the long litrary and cultural tradition– collectors might be willing to spring for the hardcover. In that case there will be a jacket with end-flaps, but there’s no possibility within this printing method of doing anything with the endpapers themselves. However, there could be a decoration on the first page, or even an allover pattern if some aspect of your artwork lends itself to that. We don’t need to worry about that at this point, it’s just something to keep in the back of our minds.
Thank you so much for sending the pdf of The Foliate Head. It’s even more gorgeous than I had imagined, and I can’t wait to hold a copy in my hands and see those lovely pages on paper. The typography is very beautiful, and the “heads” are fabulous – each breathes with its own internal energy and spirit. It’s going to be a glorious book.
I’m mailing cheques today, including yours.’
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Clive Hicks-Jenkins to Elizabeth Adams: 16 June 2012 13:19:58 GMT+01:00
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‘The cover for Thaliad is well underway. For a couple of days I made drawings that pursued the fatal fight between Samuel and Ran, because it was the episode that most caught at my imagination in graphic terms. Striking, though I was uneasy that it was rather too male and tough. But then suddenly the sense of nature and of knowledge learned and stored that’s at the heart of Thaliad gripped my imagination, and the cover image became something far more life-affirming and mystical. It is a portrait of Thalia, but not as you might imagine!!! More to do with inner worlds than outer ones.
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Clive to Beth and Marly: 20 June 2012 08:24:54 GMT+01:00
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‘Beth, Marly, there’s an image of the final paste-up on the Artlog today, though I plan on re-making the Y of Youmans to be a little ‘brighter’. Peter will photograph the artwork under proper lights when he returns tomorrow evening. This has all gone relatively smoothly, hasn’t it? Nothing like the clock ticking to concentrate the mind.
A good time to thank you both for passing this my way. It’s not often these days that artists get the opportunity to make the type of hand-crafted imagery for covers that I so enjoy producing. Photographs and photo-shop seem to have taken over at the big publishing houses, and to my eye the results are too often characterless. I guess I’m a dinosaur here, one of the old brigade.
The back cover artwork will follow later today. Quite simple, with plenty of room for blurb etc.’
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Comment from Beth at the Artlog: 19 June 2012 15:17:14 GMT+01:00
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‘Clive, we will do our best to make sure the book is indeed beautiful to look at, and does justice to this wonderful artwork. I too despaired of what to put on the cover, because the poem covers such a span of time and change. I had hoped you might settle on a portrait of Thalia, but didn’t suggest it — isn’t it odd how things work out? One of the aspects of the illustration I love the most, and was surprised by this morning, were those bright red lips. For me, they connect with the fruits– for Thalia represents life, and growth: sustenance received and sustenance given — but she also grows from girl to woman. Clive, it’s perfect, thank you so very much!’
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Thaliad is available as a paperback or hardback, and may be purchased from the following sites.
Order from the Phoenicia Publishing online store
Order from Amazon.com
Order from Amazon.UK
Order from Amazon Europe
… a copy of the paperback edition of Thaliad.
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Beth’s design for the book is beautiful. She has such a fine touch in the matter of how the poetry sits on the page, and she’s been most sensitive to the reproduction of my images, which have a lovely, silvery delicacy. The cover art too, has been handsomely reproduced, and will hopefully do its job of attracting the eye wherever the book is displayed in bookshops, or whenever an image of it is used for online reviews or promotional purposes.
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Now I await my copies of the hardback edition, which are currently en-route from the US.
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Meanwhile, after yesterday’s disaster of forgetting to reverse the image before cutting it, at my desk I’m underway with a new block for the bookplate that is to accompany the first fifty copies of Thaliad ordered, paperback or hardback. When complete, the plates will be forwarded to their new owners, ready to adorn their copies of the book. A little Christmas present from Marly, Beth and me.
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The drawing transferred in reverse onto the lino-block. This is the crucial stage that caught me out yesterday, when I transferred and then cut a positive image onto the lino.
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Scratching selected areas of the block with an etching needle will lend tone to the finished print.
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I regularly check on progress by making Conté pencil rubbings on thin paper placed over the block. These give a rough idea of how the work is shaping up.
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I’m cutting the lino-block for the Thaliad bookplate this week. Here are the preparations.
A first, as-rough-as-they-come study. But I liked the liveliness.
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Second study, the bird rendered as a cut-out in order to trial various positionings.
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The third study, which is a collage. Collage is a much better technique than a drawing for getting a feel for how a relief-print will look. After this I made a final drawn-to-scale transfer to the block ready to begin working with my gouges.
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The paperback edition of Marly Youman’s epic open Thaliad is now available at Amazon UK. The cover and decorations are by me. You can order it by clicking
HERE.
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Words from Elizabeth Adams at Phoenicia Publishing on Marly Youmans’ Thaliad, launching on December 1st.
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‘Clive, my brain feels awash in oak leaves, berried garlands, and village-scapes that capture the New England-y essence of places Marly and I have always called home, but are not at all Welsh — it’s a tribute to your artistic brilliance that you’ve been able to create a world and an emotional climate for Thaliad that is so perfect and evocative of both text, place, and the creative force itself — a major theme of the book. I’m sure that the readers will agree.’
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Damian and I have been booked by the Contemporary Art Society of Wales to speak on the 1st December in Cardiff about the interface of poetry and art. What’s planned is a dialogue between the two of us, peppered with readings and accompanied by a rolling display of paintings on a screen. Furious Embrace is the Hervé and the Wolf painting title that Damian borrowed last year for his chapter on poetry in my monograph, and it energetically… and of course poetically… captures a spirit of what it can feel like when the painter and the poet engage creatively. The offspring of such couplings can occasionally take even the participants by surprise, as offspring have a way of doing.
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The event has been arranged by CASW for its members, and I believe is already fully subscribed. But perhaps it’s an idea that Damian and I might be persuaded to air on another occasion, as we’ve already been approached by a bookshop here in West Wales to do something similar.
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From today you can pre-order Marly Youman’s new title Thaliad from Phoenicia Publishing. I’ve had a preview of the work that Elizabeth Adams has done on its design, and I can promise you that the book is going to be very beautiful.
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Praise for Thaliad.
…a wondrous text filled with richly layered and evocative poetry. Like a bardic tale, it demands to be read aloud. The images of nature are sensual, fertile, a source of healing. Violence is hammered into fierce staccato rhythms and Thalia’s ecstatic visions soar with heat and light as the human spirit is consoled by the divine. We are not spared the hardships of the journey, but through the storyteller’s voice we have confidence in our destination—it is this commitment to the angels of our better nature in Youmans’ sublime poetry that gives Thaliad its power to inspire hope out of fear and love out of hate.”
-Midori Snyder, from In the Labyrinth
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I made seventeen decorations for the interior of Thaliad, and these are scattered throughout the book as the frontispiece, a decorative border, character portraits and chapter headings and tailpieces. I also designed the cover, producing the image and lettering from painted paper collage.
This is my fourth collaboration with Marly on her books. Previously I’ve made covers for her novel Val Orson, and two volumes of poetry, The Throne of Psyche and The Foliate Head. She contributed a chapter to last year’s monograph Clive Hicks-Jenkins, published by Lund Humphries, and was one of the writers included in the anthology The Book of Ystwyth: six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
