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fit together. And now that Philip and Evans are presenteila Philip ’79 lives on a hilly dirt ing the book at poetry readings and exhibitions, they road in northern Connecticut, surrounded have found that the story of how they worked — or by woods and wetlands. She teaches writdidn’t work — together is as appealing to people as the ing at the College of the Holy Cross in poems and the watercolors themselves. Worcester, Massachusetts, and has published nonfic“It began so simply,” Philip says. “All we did was ask tion books and essays that chronicle her experience in a question: What shall we do and how shall we do it?” specific places: the Hudson Valley farm that her family has operated since 1732, a Japanese village where she apprenticed to a master potter, the Colorado River, Northfield Mount Hermon. Her writing is a rich fusion hilip grew up in Manhattan. But her of memoir, biography, history, even art criticism, layered grandparents, and then her parents, ran with details and side-trip stories. the family farm and orchard in the In contrast, Philip’s latest book, Water Rising, Hudson Valley, so at 16, she felt as compublished by New Rivers Press, is spare. Instead of fortable riding a tractor as she did the prose, she wrote poems, some only a handful of lines subway. She arrived at NMH in the mid-’70s, from long. Accompanying the poems are abstract watercolors the chaos of a New York public school. “I remember by her husband, artist Garth Evans. walking into the classroom at NMH and think“I’d been looking for a new challenge, and I wanted ing, ‘Nobody’s talking behind the teacher’s back. to stretch myself creatively,” Philip says. So when Evans Everybody’s listening.’ It was incredible.” emerged from his basement studio one weekend and She was among a small group of students that helped suggested they do a project together, she immediately revive the school’s farm program under the direction agreed. They’d been married for 20 years, raised a son, of Richard Odman. They acquired a single cow, which and always shared their work in progress with each they milked by hand. They tended a pair of goats, other. But they’d never collaborated. made maple syrup, even launched a honeybee operaInspired by the creative and tion. Philip recalls being summoned personal partnership between modbetween classes one day to pick up ern dance choreographer Merce a shipment of bees that had arrived Cunningham and avant-garde comfrom Georgia. The alarmed mail poser John Cage, Philip and Evans center staff could hear them buzzing. decided on a few ground rules for “Somehow it made sense to study their experiment. They would both AP English and then go milk a cow step outside their usual genres: Philip or take care of bees,” Philip says. would write poems and Evans, who “It was a good break for the mind.” works mostly as a sculptor, would Philip also edited The Bridge at paint. And they would work secretly; NMH, and experienced firsthand Leila Philip ’79 (right) with they wouldn’t show each other anythe power of storytelling. One her husband Garth Evans thing for a whole year. Philip didn’t evening, while assembling an issue want to make poems that commented on the waterof the newspaper, she was confronted by a group of colors, and Evans didn’t want to make watercolors that students from Iran who had heard she was preparing illustrated the poems. a story about the shah and the political unrest in their The result is a “stunning and original collaboration,” country. They begged her not to run the story, for fear declared a review in the online magazine Artcritical. that their families at home could be targeted. Philip The journal River Teeth called Water Rising “a tribute to consulted with Bill Batty, the advisor to The Bridge, a shared creative life.” Both Philip’s poems and Evans’s but he gave her the freedom to decide what to do. At watercolors are meditations on the natural world — first, Philip dug in her heels, citing freedom of speech, how different pieces of the environment and humanity but in the end, she pulled the story. “It was not a game
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PHOTO: ARIANA RANDOLPH
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