The Written Image by Julie Johnstone

Contents

Shelagh Atkinson & Kathrine Sowerby

Alastair Clark & Theresa Mu単oz

Jessica Crisp & Richie McCaffery

Pat Crombie and Colin Donati

Mark Doyle & nick-e melville

David Faithfull & Alexander Hutchison

Anne Forte & Niall Campbell

Lindy Furby & Patricia Ace

Anupa Gardner & Elizabeth Reeder

Laura Gressani & Stav Poleg

Joyce Gunn Cairns & Christine De Luca

Catherine Hiley & Nalini Paul

Kittie Jones & Vicki Husband

Sarah Keast & Hamish Whyte

Lesley Logue & Anna Robinson

Hilke MacIntyre & Gerry Cambridge

Rona MacLean & Molly Vogel

Norman McBeath & Kathleen Jamie

Gillian Murray & Brian Johnstone

Paul Musgrove & Paula Jennings

Leena Nammari & Robert Crawford

Morvern Olding & Samuel Tongue

Cat Outram & Ken Cockburn

Frank Pottinger & Diana Hendry

Linda Kosciewicz Fleming & Dorothy Alexander

Catherine Sargeant & Janette Ayachi

Matthew Carey Simos & Rebecca Sharp

Susannah Stark & Anita Govan

Kelly Stewart & Tom Pow

Miriam Vickers & Anita John

Susan Wilson & Colin Herd

Shelagh Atkinson & Kathrine Sowerby Katherine Sowerby & Shelagh Atkinson Joint Statement At our first meeting, when asked to recall a childhood memory, Shelagh remembered running a good race: a swift 100 yards. She remembered the build up to the race, the sound of the starter pistol and the words ‘on your marks’. Kathrine remembered building dens in the woods; the solitude and safety she felt crouched in the undergrowth and the textures and smells of the earth, branches and leaves. Images and words were exchanged and from a bundle of poems Shelagh began working from the last stanza of a poem called ‘This is the Arrangement’ with colours and shapes, resonant of Shelagh’s dynamic screenprints. This is the arrangement - flickering white spots: the desert is jumping. The pack lift their ears, skulk together and lick at fallen berries. Fur-slicked, they bounce their bushy tails and bark to be petted. During a studio visit Shelagh gave Kathrine a zinc plate to work on with a dry point needle and, alongside the existing marks made by Shelagh, she scratched the shape of a tail. ‘…a black cross-hatched form. It isn’t a nest shape, but suggests a nest-like construction. The pieces that go into the object are sharp and pointed, but in their assembly they create something soft. So I rest in that space for a little and then am drawn back to the racing lines. There is a tension between the buzzing around lines in the foreground; contained but restless energy, and the lines in the red plane that feel older, slower, like a metal plate being eaten away over time, which do not seem bound by the edges of the plate which they erode, but rather stretch out into the space beyond.’ ‘An Extra Blessing’, written in response to this new image and the process itself, echoes the movement and the precarious nature of hiding places. Danger comes in the form of biting cats and scorpions hovering in the background just as in ‘The Arrangement’, the final print, the outline of an animal lurks behind the whirling lines in the area of deepest red.

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Kathrine Sowerby Biography Kathrine Sowerby is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art’s MFA programme and Glasgow University’s MLitt in Creative Writing. She has exhibited her writing in a visual art context and her 15 page poem ‘Unnecessarily Emphatic’ was transcribed for theatre and performed at Columbia University, New York. A former Clydebuilt mentee, her poems, stories and novel extracts have been published in journals and anthologies including Gutter, 2HB, New Writing Scotland, Northwords Now and Aesthetica. In 2012, she was a runner up in the Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition, commended in the Wigtown Poetry Competition and received a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust. Kathrine is co-editor of fourfold, a curated poetry journal, and lives in Glasgow with her partner and three children. http://kathrinesowerby.com/ Shelagh Atkinson Biography Born in Scotland in 1959 her early studies were of Social Psychology and later Communication at Napier University Edinburgh. Most recently she was selected for the prestigious Kunming China International Print exhibition [ 2012 ] Also in 2012 she was included in the 35th edition Whos Who in Art by publishers Morven Press. She has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally including a solo exhibition at the Scottish Russia Institute [ 2010 ], Thoroughly Modern Women at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery [ 2006 ], Women in Contemporary Printmaking Sofia Bulgaria [ 2005 ] and the Kanagawa Print Triennial Japan [ 2001 ] She has created a number of commissioned portrait pieces [ Sally Beamish and Simon McBurney ] to name a few. She works from her studio in Edinburgh and can be found at www.shelaghatkinson.co.uk.

An Extra Blessing My flexible torso corresponds roughly with sleep wrapped in a blanket to brush away biting cats, balanced and perched on branches. Flashes of white underside warn me of possible movement and scorpions. Detached from my body and fleeing, my feathers are replaced by a rudder, growing back and braced against the tree, sweeping insects or holding the embryo absorbed in my soft pelvis; an extra blessing that keeps me from flying.

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Alastair Clark & Theresa Muñoz I Zoom Your Face Alastair Clark Biography Alastair Clark was raised in Fife before moving to Edinburgh to study Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. He works at Edinburgh Printmakers as the Studio Director where he has taught Printmaking and worked with a multitude of artists in the past 20 years to make prints in one way or another. Alastair exhibits regularly and is a professional member of the Society of Scottish Artists. Theresa Muñoz Biography Theresa Muñoz born in Vancouver, Canada to Spanish-Filipino parents and now lives in Edinburgh. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, New Writing Scotland, Canadian Literature, and many other journals. A debut pamphlet entitled Close was published by HappenStance Press in 2012. She has completed a Ph.D. in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow on the work of Tom Leonard. She is a regular contributor to Scotland’s Herald book pages and is the online editor of the Scottish Review of Books. Notes on the work, Alastair To begin, Theresa gave me a selection of her new works and I showed her a selection of prints in progress. I was instantly drawn to the poem ‘I zoom your face’ as it was so visually evocative, suggesting many images and provoking a strong emotional response. Note on the work, Theresa I wrote this poem two years while playing with photoshop. ‘I zoom your face’ explores the relationship between longing and image, specifically how tools of digital media can mimic human gestures. This poem describes the process of making an image larger and smaller, which evokes both blurred and clear memories of intimacy within the narrator. Although, the work is undeniably written from Theresa’s personal perspective, I was drawn to the universal appeal of the poem. While the images are specific and personal to me I wanted to create a work that could form a universal expression of longing. Working with Alastair It’s been an exciting and intriguing experience working with an artist who shares similar thematic interests, but presents their work in a different medium. Throughout the process I felt as though my work was being explored, interpreted and then elevated to a visual and interactive level. Working with Alastair really lifted the poem and gave it a sense of fullness that previously wasn’t there. Working with Theresa Throughout the collaboration Theresa was very open to my free interpretation of her work. We worked independently, through circumstances, almost by correspondance. I picked a finished piece of text and responded to it with images, aiming to create a visual response to the words that was in keeping with the mood and the emotional richness of the text. She has been very trusting in giving her words for me to respond to. I hope she is pleased with the

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Jessica Crisp & Richie McCaffery Jessica Crisp Artist Statement In this assemblage of porcelain, water and glass, words are fragmented, repeated, mirrored and curved. The above is reflected below, porcelain becomes transparent, we look through and around the object. After deciding to make a ceramic piece, taking the step away from familiar ground to work with a discipline new to both of us, it has been a surprising and uncertain process, from making drawings and models, to discussing test firings, raw materials and dimensions - to suddenly seeing this complete piece in front of us. Early in our collaboration Richie and I spent time talking about themes which have preoccupied both of us, in particular gender, motherhood and domestic scenes. From this we spoke about vessels or carriers and the Cowrie as an early symbol of the feminine and of fertility. From here the collaboration widened as we worked with a ceramicist on the porcelain and an aquarium makers on the glass case. Both Richie’s and my work looks at ideas of value. I am interested in the pleasures and familiar spaces of daily life - the handholds by which we move from hour to hour and day to day. Throughout the days I have been working on this piece I have been watching this porcelain vessel, lit up suspended on my kitchen table. From morning to evening, as the light fades, I have watched shadows pass across its curving form. For me it is a reflective and absorbing piece. I am drawn into looking at it again and again, my eyes rest on it as I think of something else. Richie McCaffery Poet Statement Early on in this project, Jessica and I decided to work on an installation piece combining both artwork and poetry into a tangible object, instead of working purely with printed matter. The result is both striking and ambiguous and incorporates the printed word, pottery (in the form of a defamiliarised cowrie-shell shape) and glass and water which produce the fascinating shadow play that characterises much of Jessica’s work. Here, in ‘Porcellana’ (taken from the Italian word for ‘cowrie’ and the root of the English word ‘porcelain’) text is refracted and warped by the water as much as the light into a rather mysterious and miminal artwork caught somewhere between the written word and its pottery ‘doppelganger’. This is particularly relevant to my own poetry, much of which is concerned with pottery and hairline cracks as features in heirlooms and family history, and the cowrie theme fits in with my on-going interest in the figure of the ‘mother’. The poem itself took on a slightly anti-colonialist subtext after a visit to an antique shop where I was shown a Victorian bag of cowries sold for a shilling to early settlers. I thought that perhaps the cowries may have had vastly more value in other cultures, and I see much of what I write as a placing of highvalue on things that may be overlooked or undervalued. Jessica Crisp Biography

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Jessica studied Printmaking at Gray’s School of Art. During her degree she was awarded the Cross Trust Travel Scholarship to study at the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemet, Hungary. On graduating she was awarded the Royal Scottish Academy, John Kinross Travel Scholarship in Florence. On her return she moved to Bournemouth to run the Printmaking studios as technician at the Arts University at Bournemouth. After three years in Bournemouth she moved back to Scotland in November 2010, to live in Leith and make her work from Edinburgh Printmakers studio. She works part time as the Printmaking technician for Forth Valley College in Stirling. Richie McCaffery Biography Richie McCaffery (b. 1986) lives in Stirling but grew up in Warkworth, Northumberland. He is a third year PhD student in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow as well as a teaching assistant. He is the author of two pamphlet collections, ‘Spinning Plates’ (HappenStance Press, 2012) and ‘Ballast Flint’ (Cromarty Arts Trust, 2013). The latter pamphlet was the product of his time as writer in residence at Cromarty and the title poem featured in Salt’s ‘Best British Poetry 2012’ anthology. He has also had work in ‘The Best Scottish Poems 2012’ as well as ‘The Dark Horse’, ‘The Rialto’, ‘The Reader’ and ‘The Manhattan Review’. His first full collection is forthcoming in 2014 from Nine Arches Press under the tentative title ‘The Rapture’.

Porcellana Small jute sacks of cowries sold to early colonialists for just one shilling. Cowries remain banked in languages, as porcelain, capital or dowry. Silver shillings have gone, their meaning all spent, empty cowries still smile.

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Pat Crombie and Colin Donati Pat Crombie Artist Statement ‘Hunted’ is an etching which evolved out of a poem by Colin Donati. His poem is influenced by his reading of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and is full of the imagery of the whale hunt. I started the project thinking about and drawing some of the images: ‘sea-slug grazing’, ‘harpoon-metal, ‘the whale-fat stowed in casks’, ‘the glass-eyed stare’. However, it was Colin’s description of the brutality of the whale hunt and the David and Goliath fight to the kill that struck me most – Man’s success in conquering and killing the greatest beast on Earth. Also, I admit that I desperately wanted to get a whale’s tail into the image! I had several attempts at placing the tail, deliberately exaggerating the size of it. In the image there is a huge size difference between the ship and the whale. It is up to the viewer, however, to decide which is the more courageous and noble. As I drew I decided that my image would transfer better to a photopolymer plate as I would be able to achieve a stronger splash effect on the plate. Also I liked the grainy effect of the drawing. The words were added in a different colour by using a second plate. The words, at first, were in the same ink as the rest of the image. However, the idea of having them written in red, suggesting blood, took root late on in the working of the image. Colin Donati Poet Statement My participation in the Written Image project has been as a poet in collaboration with printmaker Pat Crombie, and as a printmaker responding to work by the poet John Barbour (d.1395). The collaboration with Pat got off to a late start due to difficulties in arranging our first meeting. After reading a sample of my work, Pat chose to respond to my poem ‘Rung’, and the result is her dramatic etching of an imagined seascape, ‘Hunted’. The poem originally arose as an early response to Herman Melville, and its first lines came unbidden while I was on a bus in the North East of Scotland. ‘Rung’ weaves a medley of signature elements from Moby Dick and The Bell Tower together with a number of semi-conscious associations, such as my memory of the television image of undersea predation mentioned in the poem which, as a child, I found perfectly terrifying and beautiful in equal measure. Although it is not really for me to describe the poem, ‘Rung’ is not so much meant to take ‘Melvillean’ ideas seriously per se, as more intended to reflect his strange rhetoric, defiantly ‘masculine’ lyricism, and often frankly skewed arguments, and partly, I guess, take this as an excuse to ‘confront’ lyricism more generally. The title is meant to invoke Melvillean punning. My own submitted lithograph on black paper, ‘Grevouser to Climb (1313)’, renders a passage of text from John Barbour’s Brus in the form of an image from the story which it tells. The words are part of his account of the recapture of Edinburgh Castle by stealth, in 1313, when a party of Scots scaled the castle rock under cover of night led by William Francis whose father had been keeper of the castle before the war. I have lightly modernised some of the older features of the Scots spelling. The image is a nocturne in which the castle rock is suggested as a dark presence under stars. For obvious historical reasons, the implied architecture is not drawn to resemble the castle in its present form. I hope in time to produce further visual responses to passages from Barbour’s Brus.

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Pat Crombie Biography I was born in Edinburgh and graduated from Edinburgh University in Scottish History and History of Architecture. I began my working life as a schoolteacher and also taught in further education. I then changed direction, branching out to run my own pottery workshop for several years and teaching pottery in Community Education. Art has always been a large part of my life and I have attended courses at Edinburgh College of Art, Leith School of Art and the Open College of the Arts. After doing some courses in printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art I was hooked and, although I still paint, my great enthusiasm in recent years has been etching. Sometimes I add texture to the etching with fine Japanese papers and this can also provide some colour. I am particularly interested in pattern and, as a regular visitor to New York to see family, I find inspiration in the pattern and reflection of light on the tall buildings. My subjects are anything and everything that attracts me, from reflections in buildings to plant forms – and, on occasion, even frogs! At present I am particularly interested in exploring tree forms and bark, particularly silver birch, a native of Scotland. Colin Donati Biography is a freelance poet, musician and printmaker living in Edinburgh. He recently edited the first full collection of the plays of Robert McLellan: Robert McLellan: Playing Scotland’s Story (Luath, 2013). His poetry can be found in pamphlet collections by Kettillonia and Red Squirrel Press, as well as in magazines and anthologies, including in the forthcoming Scottish History in Verse (Mainstream) and the collected edition of new Lermontov translations currently in preparation by the Scottish Poetry Library. (His translations also include the first Scots setting, to his knowledge, of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’.) He has twice received funding from the erstwhile SAC, including a major bursary in 2006 to produce a complete Scots translation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the pilot chapter of which originally appeared in The Smoky Smirr o Rain (Itchy Coo, 2003), with other extracts to date published and/or forthcoming in Chapman, Edinburgh Review and DIN. His original music, which he performs under the collective name ‘Various Moons’ with cellist Robin Mason and Hamish Whyte (percussion), includes his settings of works by poets such as Norman MacCaig and the First World War poet Isaac Rosenburg. He has served on various cultural committees, including the Saltire Society Publications Committee, Poetry Association (Scotland), and the Scottish Parliament’s Cross Party Group on the Scots Language, and is a past Chair of the Robert Henryson Society. His distant Italian roots are in Fosciandora.

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Mark Doyle & nick-e melville Mark Doyle Artist Statement For our collaboration we felt it was important that the visual, conceptual and technical aspects of the pieces should all work in unison to create a coherent whole. It was with this in mind that I experimented with various printmaking techniques during the initial stages of our project. While Nicky created the visual poems that would form the starting point for the final pieces, I started work experimenting with the combination of printmaking techniques that would eventually be employed to realise the finished series of mixed-media prints. It was my intention to use methods that would give the viewer an insight into the creation process of the finished work. Since much of my recent work has been concerned with the potential of print to be viewed as not just an image but also as a tactile, three-dimensional form in its own right, I was keen to use methods that would emphasise this concept. I experimented with hand-contoured printing plates cut from acrylic, wood and zinc, whose intricate shapes when printed under pressure would be transferred to the substrate, creating undulating, embossed and debossed areas of inked and uninked paper. Having carried out a series of test prints I decided on an approach that I felt was most conducive to my practice and the qualities we wished to achieve. This process involved the intricate laser-cutting of thin sheets of plywood to form the printing plates. These were then inked in relief and assembled on the bed of an etching press before being printed. This process transferred both the ink and the contoured shape of the plates to the dampened paper, effectively making the paper a cast of the three-dimensional printing plate. After the paper had dried the final stage in the process was the addition of linear screen-printed elements imposed over the pre-printed areas of the composition. Once I had received Nicky’s final poems I began to create additional visual elements inspired by both the conceptual and aesthetic aspects of these pieces. It was my aim to consolidate both Nicky’s and my own visual elements into three aesthetically seamless prints. To do this I opted to have one central compositional element for each, composed of both the visual poem and the visual form inspired by it. For example in ‘Put together without defence gnash teeth’ I superimposed Nicky’s negative letter forms over a broken geometric shape. The form of this abstracted shape suggesting both fragmented shards and the neatly fitting pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The intention of this being to reference the method of the compound print process of which the pieces are composed as well as the collaborative method of their creation, in which the conceptual, technical and aesthetic ideas of each party are coherently drawn together to form the finished work. nick-e melville Poet Statement My initial thoughts when the chance to collaborate with a printmaker arose – Mark Doyle– were to use the etymologies of printing terms – etch, press, print, etc., as starting points for poems. Mark and I discussed various print processes and devised a long list of terms that I then explored to isolate various semantic units, with which to create visual poems. In the creation of these works I deconstructed the terms by confusing the relations between signifier, signified and the sign itself. To do this I wanted the various meanings to signify something other than their traditional associations. For example: to be eaten in authentic, a pun on etch (negative shape of the word in the print)and echt (authentic), calls into question the authenticity of the print, its process and what the image suggests. Put together without defence gnash teeth also uses negative spacing between letters, but with more words and in lines, so that the spaces would join together and form larger, more obscure shapes. The reason for this is because I wanted the shapes to suggest a structure, a compound (one of the words deconstructed for this piece), which would in turn suggest a carceral compound, Guantanamo Bay for instance. Such tangential leaps abound in my work and working with a printmaker allowed me to pursue more abstruse jumps between meaning and image, which Mark was able to expand further through his complicated print processes.

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Mark Doyle Biography Mark Doyle (born 1983) is a mixed-media artist living and working in Edinburgh, Scotland. Graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 2005, he received a first class (hons) degree in painting, as well as a number of awards, such as the Andrew Grant Bequest and the George Jackson Hutchison Memorial Prize for ‘outstanding painting by a British student’. Doyle works in an eclectic range of disciplines from sculpture to digital work, and has a particular interest in experimental printmaking processes. He has exhibited in various galleries and shows in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London including Amber Roome Contemporary Art, London Art Fair, Glasgow Art Fair, Merz Gallery, Edinburgh Printmakers, Compass Gallery, Embassy Gallery and the Royal Scottish Academy. His work is also represented in a number of private collections. Since setting up his Edinburgh studio in 2011 Doyle has worked on a number of personal print projects and experimented with various sculptural processes. Recently he has collaborated with emerging Scottish writers and poets on a number of projects producing self-published illustrated books: The Radgeworks Miscellany and Scenes from the Chilean Andes (Kenneth Araya, 2013) as well as a series of mixed media prints with Edinburgh based poet Nick-e Melville. Doyle’s current practise combines hand rendered elements, digital imaging techniques and intricately cut printing plates to produce prints that draw inspiration from the tensions and harmonies between man-made and organic structures. Through this work, Doyle attempts to explore the interplay between the image and three dimensional form, and the qualities that can be achieved when these two modes of expression are displayed simultaneously. nick-e melville Biography nick-e melville makes found, visual and (post)conceptual poetry. In the last three years he has had five publications in various formats, was featured in several exhibitions and facilitated a solo installation. Along with this collaboration with Mark Doyle, for The Written Image, he has worked with David Faithfull and Jane Hyslop to create multi-media pieces for ongoing project A68. He was Writer-in-Residence at HMP Edinburgh from 2010-2011 and has just started at PhD in Creative Writing/English Literature at Glasgow University.

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the rack composition - poem gather in a crowd cluster inside build pile with pile build put together without defence be of service by lines drawn in enthusiasm plan forward presses instrument for recording print shine light in front of many go again open space in a net throw meshknitplaittwist press upon push against clasp squeeze barrier torture eaten burnt cut into gnash teeth squeeze out together thicken stiff beyond dark blue grown concrete stone writing represent print writing on stone crush press dark blue flower beyond

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David Faithfull & Alexander Hutchison David Faithfull and Alexander Hutchison Joint Statement David Faithfull and Alexander Hutchison decided they shared an interest in throwing things: Faithfull being part of a team that won an international stone skimming championship one year on the island of Easdale (Eilean Eisdeal) in the Firth of Lorn, and Hutchison a javelin thrower – a basic spear chucker – at school, then university. The image in the print ‘The Spear of Amergin’ was inspired by two main sources: first, the cache of eight spruce and pine throwing spears found in an open-cast lignite mine near Schöningen in Germany in the 1990’s. These were well preserved, just slightly smaller than modern day javelins, and left near the remains of horses (equus moschabensis), red deer and European bison. The evidence of organised hunting, and even ritual use, is remarkable, since the weapons were dated up to 400,000 years old, and even recent estimates give the emergence of homo sapiens at below 200,000 years. Modern replicas were thrown by athletes out to a distance of 70 metres. Comparisons may be drawn between these finds and our second main source, the Clacton spear tip, made from yew and discovered in interglacial deposits in the south of England in 1911. This was estimated to come from a similar time frame – the Lower Palaeolithic – and is still reckoned to be the oldest wooden artifact ever found in these islands. The text is based on lines from ‘The Song of Amergin’ in the Book of Leinster – one of the most important sources of medieval Irish literature, genealogy and mythology –set down as the words of the Milesian bard and judge Amergin when he invoked the spirit of Ireland and laid claim to it. Amergin there links himself to all sources of natural and prophetic power and skill. Alexander Hutchison Biography Alexander Hutchison’s first book, Deep-Tap Tree, came out from the University of Massachusetts Press in 1978 and is still in print. Other poetry collections include The Moon Calf (Galliard, 1990) and Carbon Atom (Linklight, 2006). Scales Dog: Poems New and Selected appeared from Salt in 2007, and new work in Bones & Breath is due from Salt in 2013. In 2010 the distinguished Italian journal In Forma di Parole dedicated a bilingual edition (of 300 pages) to his work in translation by Alessandro Valensizi. Hutchison’s pamphlets and print collaborations in English and Scots cover a broad range, including Four Poems in Broadside (Rampant Lions Press 1977); a beautiful boxed version of “Inchcolm” with five etchings by Alfons Bytautas, RSA (Bonfire Press, 1988); Epitaph for a Butcher (1997) and Sparks in the Dark (2002) from Duncan Glen’s Akros Publications; then Epistle from Pevkos (Linklight, 2010) and Tardigrade (Perjink, 2013). Hutchison won an Academy of American Poet’s Prize way back in the Pleistocene Age (circa 1970), and took first place in the SASV Diamond Jubliee competition when the judges were Norman MacCaig and Edwin Morgan. More recently he has been RLF Writing Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2010-12) and a mentor for the Clydebuilt poetry apprenticeship scheme. As a reader, translator and occasional singer, he has performed at various venues in North America and Europe – lately at the Ratkovic Poetry Evenings in Montenegro and the Suffolk Herring Festival. He has also been invited to take part in the international Book Fair in Kyiv, Ukraine in spring, 2014.

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Anne Forte & Niall Campbell Anna Forte Artist Statement For me, one of the best things about being an artist means having complete control of the images I make, with no interference from others, so it was with some trepidation that I embarked upon this collaborative venture. However, I needn’t have worried, as it turned out to be an interesting, fruitful procedure, more of a cooperation. Niall Campbell is a poet whose work I can relate to enormously as his words evoke images of such clarity and originality; even on a first reading of his work, I could tell he was completely simpatico. One of my favourite poems by Niall is ‘Wild Strawberries’, which he states was inspired by the film made in 1957 of the same name by Ingmar Bergman. Coincidentally, or providentially, weeks before meeting him or reading his poetry, I had watched the film and was in the process of working on a series of egg tempera paintings, depicting images inspired by the film, which, because of its theme of memory and yearning for past times had struck a chord with me. Continuing the theme from ‘Wild Strawberries’ into my prints, I experimented with various images using screen print and etching, but was not satisfied with the outcome and felt rather disheartened. I decided to leave the project alone for the time being and let it wander about my subconscious for a while undisturbed, having re-read Niall’s poems. One of them in particular, ‘Danse Macabre’ soon took shape in my imagination. The Totentanz, as it was known in German-speaking countries was a familiar theme known all over Europe in the Middle Ages, and indeed is still can be seen on the walls of many buildings, as the works depicting it were often made al fresco. Many artists used the subject as a theme, including Hans Holbein the Younger who made beautiful woodcuts. The Danse Macabre warns us of the fact that we all must die sooner or later, and can also be described as a momento mori. The screen print showing in this exhibition evolved from Niall’s poem which lead to this train of thought. I do not see it as an illustration of his work but the result of a connection which would not have grown without our collaboration. Humans are absent from this landscape, apart from Virgil, composing his verses under a tree, as visualized by Simone Martini in the fourteenth century. Are they off somewhere taking part in the dance of death, or have they already been visited by the grim reaper? Temporary dwellings and forgotten livestock, testaments to the fragility of life and the passing of time, are all that remains of their brief habitation. Anna Forte Biography Since leaving Edinburgh College of Art with a BA Honours in Drawing and Painting, I have continued to work as an artist, printmaker and art teacher. I have had many group and solo exhibitions in the UK and abroad, and was recently a prize-winner in the prestigious Tokyo Screen printing Biennale. My work is mostly figurative and very personal. My interests are varied, and my work derives from them and my life and memories. I have worked as a stage designer, and some of this theatrical fascination is apparent in my work. Colour is my main tool, and I find screen print ideal to explore this. I work quite intuitively; always ready to alter the image I’m working on if it seems to be heading off somewhere else. My work is represented in many private and public collections, which include; La Musee des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Lloyds Bank; Edinburgh College of Art; The Royal Bank of Scotland; Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium; Creative Scotland; Brno Museum of Modern Art, Czech Republic; New Hall Collection, Cambridge University; Rene Weber Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; Tokyo Prefecture, Japan.

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Lindy Furby & Patricia Ace Lindy Furby & Patricia Ace Joint Statement Gallery of Wee Poems is a small installation comprising of three picture frames. Each frame contains three ‘washing lines’ of written images hanging from the lines by minute pegs. Each frame holds 8 written images. The whole installation includes 24 written images. The written images are hand printed postcards of haiku. A haiku is a short poem (Japanese in origin) which uses imagistic language to convey the essence of nature, the season and/or passing time. The haiku originated as the opening verse of a renga, a longer linked verse, written collaboratively. The printing uses collagraphs. A collagraph is a collage of materials glued on to a printing plate and then printed like an etching. The Gallery of Wee Poems offers purchasers the opportunity to curate their own gallery of wee poems by choosing eight of their preferred postcards from the series to be hung in a frame for them. The poet Patricia Ace and printmaker Lindy Furby chose to work with haiku because they share a love of the natural world and wanted to work with words and images that expressed that fascination. The initial idea was that they would meet up for a walk and one would sketch and the other would write poems. Ginko is a Japanese term for ‘haiku walk’ ... a walk where the haiku poet makes sketches or takes photographs and writes haiku as a part of his or her journey. The idea was that they would share this journey. However, fate intervened in the shape of family commitments and they could not start to do this initially. So they had the idea of corresponding mainly by postcard. This seemed particularly apt for the project as a postcard necessitates a compressed form of communication, similar to writing haiku. The Japanese haiku masters would often send each other haikus as they travelled on their journeys, similar to the way in which we might send a postcard from our holidays today. Trish would send Lindy postcards on which she had written haiku, inspired by her own experiences in the natural world throughout the seasons of summer and autumn. Lindy would then make a collagraph of the haiku with a haiga (haiku image) and send the printed postcard back to Trish. Emails were exchanged suggesting ideas and changes for development. They also attended two separate haiku and calligraphy courses at the National Gallery together, where they each got a taste of the other’s discipline by working with poems and painting. Family commitments having settled down they have gone for their first ginko (along the Water of Leith) and hope to go on more, continuing to produce more haiku-images beyond this project and into the winter and next spring. The postcards can also be bought individually and individually framed.

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Lindy Furby Artist Statement I am a mountaineer, a forest leader; I love the outdoors environment. I want to portray my relationship with the environment. I am fascinated by light and texture â&#x20AC;&#x201C; particularly the texture of stone and rock, but also trees and water â&#x20AC;&#x201C;elements of landscape. I find etching, drypoint, collagraphy and the touch of carborandum all exciting media to explore these interests and I am happy to mix media with paint and ink as well. I collect my images mainly by sketching en plein air, heavily backed by digital photography. I am particularly interested in producing work, that despite being based on sketches of things I have seen, has an abstract nature. My recent collaboration with poet Patricia Ace has been a challenge as it has taken me well out of my comfort zone- an enjoyable challenge. Lindy Furby Biography Lindy was born and brought up in north London. She went to St Matthias College of Education in Bristol In 1970. She chose her college well; it had a well provisioned printing studio. She learnt a wide range of techniques including litho, screen printing and etchings. Her favourite technique was etching. In 1973 she left the cloistered world of college and embarked on her teaching career, took up mountaineering and then had a family as well, leaving little time for art except for the occasional sketch. Recently she has returned to printmaking by initially completing an online Diploma in Foundation Studies with the Interactive Design Institute; then by attending a course on etchings at Edinburgh Printmakers lead by Alfons Bytautas and by attending a course at the Handprint Studio lead by Peter Wray on carborandum and collagraph printing. She has also learnt a lot from short courses by Bronwen Sleigh and Leena Nammari.

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Anupa Gardner & Elizabeth Reeder Anupa Gardener Artist Statement It was overwhelming being thrown together and it was awkward in the beginning. We sent each other many emails, mine mostly short and Elizabeth’s long, long ones – every thought frantically typed as it came to her head. It took me at least two or more readings to absorb it. We had some great conversations over wonderful blueberry scones and coffee that Elizabeth made herself, after which things seemed to flow more naturally. I wasn’t overwhelmed anymore! I am really happy to have met and worked with Elizabeth. I enjoyed making the book for her beautiful piece of writing. Elizabeth Reeder Poet Statement I very much like the daring shown by putting strangers together and seeing what they’ll make. Right away it was clear that Anupa was lovely and talented, and it also became clear, quickly, that we worked in incredibly different ways. I’m chaotic to start, casting a wild, wide net; while Anupa is considered, focused and builds things up. We exchanged quite a few complicated, slightly awkward emails, as well as some of our work. Then we met a few times and, taking Anupa’s lead, we chose to work with Attendance – one of my extended prose poems. We had more back and forth and she sent some sketches and we talked more about the shape and weight of the book we intended to make. And then Anupa went to work. Anupa had the far greater burden of effort and time and I’m grateful to her for her vision and skill. The book looks beautiful and it’s been fabulous to get to know her. Anupa Gardner Biography Anupa Gardner comes from a background in graphic design. She completed her Bachelors in India and went on to become a successful graphic designer. After undertaking a Masters in Illustration at Edinburgh College of Art she relocated to Winchester College, where she was artist in residence and print teacher. Returning to Edinburgh she took on the role of curator at Doubtfire Gallery. She is currently working on range of illustration projects. Elizabeth Reeder Biography Elizabeth Reeder is originally from Chicago but now calls Scotland home. Her lyrical essays and short fictions have been widely published in journals and anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut novel, Ramshackle (Freight Books) was shortlisted for the 2013 Scottish Mortgage Investment Best First Book Award and the 2012 Saltire First Book Award. Her second novel, Fremont, is published by Kohl Publishing. She teaches on the Creative Writing Programme at University of Glasgow.

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attendance - reprieve Narrative One When you die she will bury you in some out of the way place and tend to you in the way only the mourning can tend the dead. There will be rosemary and wildflowers and nettles growing there, where you will be buried. Complicated plants. Useful. By useful I mean like the brilliance of light or like sudden, primordial rain. When you die she will wear a black band around her arm, like a man. She will wear bright dresses when it’s hot; a heavy coat when the freeze comes on, but she will wear the black band at all times, so people know. It has been a long night by your bedside and she believes today is the day you will die. In the house behind me you rasp. There’s a strong wind as I witness her at the edge of our garden which becomes a field which becomes a thin gathering of trees, where you will be buried. She holds a flower, outstretched like she’s going to gift it to the wind and gusts whip her but she’s like a tree and is not threatened by the wind. She draws the flower close and it illuminates her face. I have read that a wound gives off its own light. She smiles, she has done it: it’s a flower now. After a time, she lays the flower flat on her outstretched palm, a light diminished as it is laid down like a sentence. Her face gives off its own light. She takes her other hand and holds it in the air above the flower. She presses her hands together. The white of pressure spreads out from her palms and the surface of her fingers, and moves up over the backs of her hands. Her arms shake and this shudder radiates out into her body. And it’s simple, the flower is crushed. When I see this, I know that when you die she will bury you in some out of the way place and tend to you in the way only the mourning can attend to the dead and she will stand, among wildflowers and nettles, in the sudden light, in the brilliant heavy rain.

Narrative 2: the body

it’s not parkinson’s, it’s MSA, parkinson’s meaner cousin she’s all absence, fingers long and thin like a bird skeleton with her nails painted dark blue, a treat, her touch lacks subtlety and raises in me a muscle memory of being tickled when I was a kid, those long fingers, sharp digging nails and now every vein and tendon pushes up through the skin as she reaches out to the grandkids and pulls a child towards her narrow impossible body which is so easily hidden behind a four-year-old Anupa Narrative: She lay on the floor like a bundle of old cloth. Ancient, crumbling away. Its just old age, there is no illness. We were never close.

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Laura Gressani & Stav Poleg Laura Gressani & Stav Poleg Joint Statement An experiment with the graphic-novel form, “Dear Penelope” presents three different stories - all based on the same set of images. While the stories and characters are inspired by the Odyssey, the images portray a Fringe-Festival Edinburgh, thus creating a tension between the two worlds. Like in a Fringe act, the audience/ reader is taken into the experience of a site-specific theatre: the stories and characters of the Odyssey are brought to life in common city places – bus stops, coffee shops, office buildings. The tension between word and image keeps changing throughout the piece: while the first story presents the biggest gap, the third one is when images and words come closer to reveal a different story, perhaps the one that generates the whole piece. Laura Gressani and I have created an Odyssey-themed graphic-novel: Dear Penelope. The poem Nostos is intrinsically related to our Graphic Novel: in both works the Odyssey is interwoven with the present tense, linking day-to-day routine with the archaic stories and characters, in particular the story of Penelope’s long wait for her Odysseus. Laura Gressani Biography I studied painting and drawing with Kate Downie RSA in her studio over a period of five years. Kate introduced me to monoprinting which became my medium of choice, although I continue to paint and draw. I have been a member of Edinburgh Printmakers for the past 5 years where I have continued to develop my knowledge of printmaking. I have participated regularly in open exhibitions: SSA (2013, 2012, 2010) and VAS (2010), RSA Open (2011), Edinburgh Printmakers Members Show (2010,11,12). The Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Competition (2011), Solo or joint exhibitions in galleries include: Gallery Ten (2013), Sarah Dallas (2012,2011), Scottish Arts Club (2011, 2008) Stav Poleg Biography Stav Poleg’s poetry has been published in magazines such as The Rialto, Magma, Gutter, Horizon Review, Poetry Wales and Ink Sweat & Tears. Her Theatre work was performed at the Shunt Vault, London Bridge and her poem sequence about the goddess Athena was read at The Traverse Theatre as part of Words Words Words. She is working towards a first collection.

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Nostos by Stav Poleg When he returned, in someone elseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s question, I walked away to find the August moon. Outside, the rain ran through his nostoi stories and never got tired of setting the scene. Somehow, he had managed to come back and I thought: strange, the way he acts at home like a homesick expert, tries out the nights between the kitchen and the second floor, surprised to find me waiting, walking, there. When he returned I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t ask how was the flight, or is it too cold, or is there anything, or anything you need. I walked outside to try the bread of rain. Inside, to make espresso with the new espresso dust, to beg the moon for patience for my slow perception, for the way I seem to never understand. Muse, tell me of the man of many turns.

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Joyce Gunn Cairns & Christine De Luca Joyce Gunn Cairns & Christine De Luca Joint Statement We started with a picture by Joyce which Christine really liked, depicting the meeting of the biblical Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. The former is pregnant with Jesus, the latter with John the Baptist. Christine responded fairly quickly with a poem in English. Joyce thought it might work well in Shetlandic and, having made that transformation, both agreed it was more immediate, responsive; more earthy. Joyce then felt that the poem could flow organically with the shape of the bodies. The image was thus built up and it then went through the necessary de-layering to make a print. The red nail polish (signifying blood) and the blue bird (traditional colour for Mary) were later additions to help add colour and interest. It is called ‘The Visitation’. For the second collaboration, Joyce selected a poem of Christine’s, written in English in a concrete style. It was written by way of celebrating the long association of the Bartholomew family with mapmaking in Scotland, partly based on the recent exhibition of maps, artefacts and photographs in the National Library. Joyce then responded, picking up on the butterfly imagery. It was difficult to capture the delicate nature of moths’ wings while allowing the words to be fully legible. It has been an enormously enjoyable experience for us both. Joyce writes: “Suffice it to say that it has been a superlative joy to work with Christine De Luca on this collaboration. Christine is the most accommodating, responsive, generous and interesting woman, to say nothing of her giftedness. I have enjoyed the process of creating the prints not only because I have loved her poetry for many years, and not only because the experience has exacted greater challenges with regard to my ongoing struggle as a printmaker, but also because it has meant that we have spent more time together than usual. Life gets busier as one gets older, for both of us!” Joyce Gunn Cairns Biography ‘My line never illustrates. It is the sensation of its own realisation. It is like having an experience rather than making a picture’ I studied German and Comparative Religion at Aberdeen University and Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art. I have nine works in the permanent collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, five works in the permanent collection of the City Art Centre, and works in other major collections including Balliol College, Oxford and Jesus College, Cambridge. There are three major strands to my work. The first is expressive figurative work, and a recent exhibition of this work was curated by the SNPG and the Highland Council, and toured in the Highlands and Paris. The second strand is portrait heads, mostly of writers. I draw many eminent Scottish writers, and this work has been widely exhibited and collected. The writers I draw include Alexander McCall Smith and A L Kennedy, both of whom have an international reputation. I also draw Duncan MacMillan, the leading art critic in Scotland. The third strand in my oeuvre is wildlife studies. My work has been reviewed annually since 1996. I was awarded MBE for services to the arts in the June 2004 Queen’s Honours List. I am trying in my work as an artist to honour a dimension of life that is metaphysical rather than immediately tangible. My work has been variously described as moving, creepy, and futuristic. In all areas of my work - my figurative work, my portrait drawings, and my wildlife studies - I am seeking to build bridges, to honour the spirit of the person or animal with whom I am engaging in my work at any given time. My figurative work is instinctual rather than narrative. I draw many people including many wellknown writers, and these head drawings are equally instinctual rather than representational. The same could be said of my wildlife studies. I believe in angels, and the angels have provided for me thus far, which is saying a lot given the hazardous life that we artists lead! www.joycegunncairns.co.uk Page 24

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Christine De Luca Biography Christine De Luca (Pearson) was born & brought up in Shetland. She writes in both English and Shetlandic. She has had five collections of poetry published, most recently North End of Eden (Luath Press 2010) and, as well as winning prizes in her native Shetland, won the poetry Prix du Livre Insulaire 2007 in France for a bilingual Selected. Active in translation she has also had poetry published in many languages. She has attended festivals in Norway, Finland, France, Italy, India and Canada as well as all over Scotland. She is active in developing art and literature projects and children’s books in Orkney and Shetland. Her first novel And then forever was published by The Shetland Times in 2011 and a collaborative volume – text and poetry with music and photographs – Havera: the story of an island – was published by the Shetland Amenity Trust in 2103. She is involved with both Shore Poets and the Poetry Association of Scotland in putting on poetry events in Edinburgh. www.christinedeluca.co.uk www.hanselcooperativepress.co.uk

Mary an Elizabeth An dey hüld ticht ta een anidder stumsed bi happenstance, da chancy gaets der lives wis taen but nivver o der ain choosin. A quickenin for da aalder cousin, barren as Judah’s heichts dey said. Foo her haert wis tiftit at skirlin infants, da smeegs o smug weemen; wis scordit bi da skyimp o matrons. Mary, aa but a bairn hersel, salistit at da feel o kindly airms aroond her, der swallin wames atween dem; awa fae da clash an da een o bawdy men, dem at ogled her but caad her a hoor, a hussy, a limmer. Shö keepit her coonsil aboot dis sainin, o finnin favour among weemen. But for noo der glaikit men wis i da grip o angels, dumb-struck wi messages; steelin demsels fornenst nods an winks, da coorse tongues o street an market-place; glufft bi dis queer an silent ontack; o der place i da lives o men untimely boarn; men wi speerit ta turn der peerie wirlds headicraa.

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English version for reference:

Mary and Elizabeth And they fell into an embrace, bewildered by circumstance, the chancy paths their lives had taken; always other peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s choosing. A quickening for the older cousin, barren as Judahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hills they said. How she had shrunk from skirls of infants, scorn of fecund women; shrivelled at the slights of matrons. Mary, jolted out of her childhood, relaxed to the feel of solid arms around her, their fruitful wombs between them; away from gossip and the eyes of the licentious, those who wanted her but called her a whore, a hussy, a temptress. She was sceptical of blessedness, of her favour among women. Meanwhile their giddy men were in the grip of angels, dumb-struck with messages; steeling themselves against nods and winks, the ribaldry of street and market-place; fearful of this absurd and silent drama; of their role in the lives of men untimely born; men with the spirit to turn their world upside down.

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Map Room 1973

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Catherine Hiley & Nalini Paul Catherine Hiley Artist Statement Narrative, journeying and transformation are the main elements in my work, and therefore I was delighted to work with Nalini Paul on her poem “Hrafn Floki” which recounts an Icelandic myth. My reason for choosing the book form was its inherent sturdiness and ability to travel, the content safe within the covers. This aspect of books as things that travel struck me as making an artist’s book a suitable medium for the story of this mythic explorer and his ravens. I took the idea of the raven as a beginning and end-point to the legend and emphasized this by making the book cover ravenshaped, so that like in Nalini Paul’s poem, the story literally unfolds from the raven mother, and then comes back to her. Nalini Paul Poet Statement The poem, • • • •, is inspired by a Shetlandic myth about the explorer, Hrafn Floki, the first Norseman to sail deliberately from Norway to Iceland. The title makes use of ellipses to illustrate the narrative structure of the poem, while simultaneously engaging a visual image, where each black dot represents one of the young ravens; and the red dot is Hrafn’s daughter, Gerhild. I had considered the title “Hrafn Floki”, but felt that the series of dots would more satisfyingly cross the boundaries between word and image. I wrote the poem based on notes containing the bare bones of a story I had been told in Orkney a few years ago, by storyteller, Tom Muir. Having forgotten about the story and later unearthing my sparse notes, I also realised that Catherine and I had similar interests in folklore and birds. While writing the poem, I was struck by the strong visual imagery of the story, especially the use of black and red, and their metaphorical meanings. After seeing my early drafts, Catherine was very clear in her mind that the only colours in the artwork should be black and red; and I fully agreed that this would stay true to the intensity of emotions and themes explored, such as loss, grief, guilt and retribution. As Catherine and I met and discussed the poem, which I had redrafted several times, she came up with the superb idea of an illustrated book with a cover that opens like a bird’s wings unfolding. I was thrilled to see initial sketches for the inside, of the “h” and “S”, which reminded me of an illuminated manuscript. I made some final, minor changes to the poem (the title came last), whilst Catherine’s sketches emerged into polished drawings, and eventually the pdf proofs for the book. The red sail and Gerhild’s red dress are bold images that sink deep into the psyche, offset by the black raven chicks and the mother raven. Gerhild’s innocence is beautifully embodied in the animated figures that dance across the page in vivid splashes of red, punctuated by the ominous raven. It is difficult to describe the joy at seeing the finished book for the first time, knowing that the entire object so fully complemented the spirit of the poem. The different sections of the narrative are given pause through the turning and unfolding of the page, making the act of reading into a kind of journey. As the raven has the final say, enclosing itself over the poem, the reader is invited again to open its black, finger-like wings.

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Catherine Hiley Biography Catherine Anne Hiley was born in England in1979, but grew up in Regensburg, Germany. She studied in London, Berlin and Vancouver and holds a diploma in Fine Art from the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weissensee. She moved to Scotland in 2008, where she became a member of Edinburgh Printmakers in the same year. Her main areas of work are lithography and artist’s books, though she is proficient in many printmaking techniques. Besides working as freelance illustrator and printmaker, Catherine also teaches at Edinburgh Printmakers and works as studio assistant at the Edinburgh Laser Cutting Studio. She maintains a website at www.cahiley.com Nalini Paul Biography Nalini takes inspiration from the natural world, folklore and her own memories of growing up in Vancouver, Canada. A keen walker and photographer, she enjoys collaborations and memory work; particularly those involving journeys of various kinds, whether literal, metaphorical or both. She has produced several pieces for stage, incorporating Indian classical dance, Orkney traditional dance and film. These include: Orkney’s A Johnsmas Foy (2010); Ankur Productions’ Ha-Ha (Citizens Theatre, 2012), Jukebox (Tron, 2013); and Glasgow Film’s For All project (GFT, 2013). Her first poetry pamphlet, Skirlags, was shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Award in 2010. While working as George Mackay Brown Writing Fellow in Orkney (2009-10), she explored themes of migration, memory and landscapes, collaborating with archaeologists, visual artists, musicians and dancers; and with the RSPB. Nalini’s poetry, which has been described as “Ted Hughes with a magical bent” is widely published. She teaches Creative Writing and English Literature in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

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•

Hrafn Floki, “The Raven” explorer steals three chicks in feather-black night. They fly and return to their captor’s voice, unwritten ink in the well. Time grows wings to cut the air. Beaks tear through death-meat, make show to talk. Hrafn’s need for navigation from Norway to Iceland fuels the ship. A cage gives views of stars. ~ Two months gone, the day as blue as Hrafn’s eyes, he sets the birds loose. The first flies back to the Faroes. The second circles high, then drops and sticks to the mast. The third and last is blue-black glistened, seeking land to fill its hunger and Hrafn’s greed. The speck fades and fades… Weeks later, Iceland appears. They dance and drink under the stars and the raven’s moonlit wings. ~ In Shetland, Hrafn’s daughter, Gerhild wears her favourite red dress. She sees a raven dancing in the sunlit woods. It flaps and hops like a toy, flies a few feet, then stops. Gerhild follows her latest joy, a red dot chasing a black smudge across the page of her life. The raven stops again to tease, then wing beats echo her heart.

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At the loch edge it hovers and flies, away from black depths. ~ “Gerhild! Gerhild! Ger-hild!” The sound of blood rushes in the ears. The red dress floats like a fallen sail her body unmarked an angel asleep. When father and mother fall to earth and tear their hair, tears come late as the sun goes out, a sudden blur of saltwater. The raven flies past Hrafn, a black mark against his name. Then clarity comes in the mother’s retribution— for stolen chicks, a stolen child.

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Kittie Jones & Vicki Husband Kittie Jones & Vicki Husband Joint Statement Kittie Jones and Vicki Husband took their mutual interest in wildlife, and its intersection with humanmade environments, as a starting point for their project. A shared fascination with islands led them to make two trips to Inchcolm island in the Firth of Forth during summer 2013. Here they were inspired by a raucous colony of lesser black-backed gulls. The history of the island’s involvement in battles – from raids on Inchcolm abbey in the 1300s to military installations built during World Wars I and II – was also a source of inspiration. The island’s location, in sight of the iconic Forth bridges, suggested the idea of using classic transport promotional posters as a point of visual reference and a way to incorporate text from the poem into the final print. Vicki Husband Biography Vicki Husband has her poetry widely published in literary magazines including: Gutter, Iota, Magma, The North, Northwords Now and The Rialto. In 2013 Vicki was a runner-up in the Pighog Press / Poetry School pamphlet competition; she has previously been placed in The Edwin Morgan International Poetry Prize and the Mslexia Poetry competition. Vicki co-runs the Glasgow Poetry Book Group; she blogs at vickihusband.wordpress.com and glasgowpoetrybookgroup.wordpress. com

Larus Fuscus, Inchcolm Before we step off the boat they have us in their sights, so we ca canny through their territory; white feathers cling to shore rock, black tang, buckthorn. We keep heads down, pass them lined up on pow-pow shelter roofs. They’re smart in grey suits, white bibs and hoods; gorse-yellow beaks kenspeckle – with red targets for training chicks. The young hunker in the grass, camouflaged await their cue. Some lie too still – wings upended like white flags, legs at odd angles. When we get closer they start: ear-wrecking open-throated shanty cries let neighbours across the firth know – keep shottie! They rise as the comb of a wave, rip a tide of air, sound a bathymetry of the sky, bank to the right, fall away like cliffs. When we crouch down among their grassy parapets, they land again one by one – old fears home to roost. Heads periscope and an eye meets mine in no-mans land black spot: an island in an absinthe sea salt-sore rimmed. And I know this eye – more than the cutlass of a beak – could gut me with one thrawn stare.

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Sarah Keast & Hamish Whyte Sarah Keast Artist Statement Working with Hamish has been a delight! At our initial meeting we exchanged poetry books and images and we followed this up with meetings in Edinburgh. He wrote the 4 line poem “The rowing boat”. I did some sketches and an initial lino cut of the poem. It seemed to be ideal for a folded artists book. The pages were screen printed then reworked using lino and monoprinting. However I was not satisfied by it, so I separated the pages, strung them together using a hemp twine and then added small ceramic beads I had made which resembled old cork fishing floats. This was then framed in a deep frame. When he e mailed me the first poem he included the following thoughts “I had an image of a rowing boat – the boat is the body of the bird and the oars are the wings. Then I thought about this image in very basic terms - -u- - and that of course looks like a metric foot used in scansion, and it is – it’s a trisyllabic foot , long, short, long, called a cretic, (some connection with greek islands), apparently common in folk poetry and proverbs and advertisements! Example “la di da”. So here is a whole bunch of them” This was technical writer speak for me and both mildly terrifying and very stimulating. I was thinking coastal skiff racing and the Orkney yawl boats. I had the idea that each person was thinking different thoughts as they rowed. Hamish refined the poem to 6 sets of words so the boat needed 6 oars. A coastal landscape was screen printed on Somerset satin then developed using relief blocks and monoprinting. The words were from letter press fonts. I started with 4 copies of this print but monoprinting reduced the number of prints to two. We are working on a third “boat” poem/print. I work with print making and 3D work including sculpture, collage and mixed media. In printmaking I combine screen printing with woodcuts, linocuts and monoprinting. I work on screens at Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop and have relief printing presses in my studio at home in Dumfries and Galloway. I mainly use Somerset papers and I use lino, fabric, textiles and wood to introduce texture and layers to screen prints. It feels like a natural progression to move from printing to making one off mixed media and sculptural pieces using the same techniques. My mixed media work combines printing into clay to make printed ceramics, then combining fabric and metalworking with drawing, painting and printing and the use of driftwood. My art work is informed by three major sources. I am strongly influenced by the environment around me particularly the countryside and my life-long association with the sea. I grew up on the Fife coast and lived for a time in the Orkney Islands. I originally studied geology and upland and coastal geography. I had the privilege to work all over Scotland visiting sites of special scientific interest providing conservation advice. This experience definitely influences my work in lots of ways: colours, sense of place and landscapes. Secondly I have always read poetry and listened to music while making work. The meaning of poems and song lines often trigger ideas for art works. Lastly I use art as a way of exploring my inner world of emotional responses, memories and imagination. Sarah Keast Biography Sarah spent her earliest years in Dundee College of Art where her father was a student when she was born in 1968. She grew up on the coast in Fife in a house with printing presses and contemporary art as a normal part of daily life. She spent many childhood evenings in the kitchen of Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop while her parents attended exhibitions. Turning her back on this artistic upbringing she trained as a marine environmental scientist and geologist and worked in conservation before becoming a management consultant in 2000. Her scientific background often influences her research style and approach to art works. Sarah only began to developing her own art work in 2004. She trained at Dumfries and Galloway College until 2010 where she discovered the influence of the early years had not been lost and she had a latent knowledge of print making. She has been involved in the Room 13 Art Project intermittently over the last 13 years. Sarah works in print making and mixed media /3D . She is inspired by the natural environment particularly the sea and is also influenced by the history of places, poetry and music. Sarah is interested in art as a form of inner exploration of feelings and emotional responses to places and events. She has had several solo exhibitions in Scotland and one in England. She participates in Spring Fling Open Studios in Dumfries and Galloway. Page 34

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Lesley Logue & Anna Robinson Lesley Logue & Anna Robinson Joint Statement: In The Forest This collaborative book, ‘In The Forest’ and the accompanying print ‘Fallen’ has been created by artist and printmaker, Lesley Logue, and poet, Anna Robinson. As artists, both are concerned with the impact of history and environment on individuals and their communities. This particular project began when, at a research share day, both realised they shared a strong interest in woodlands. They could be the lost, mythic or historic landscapes of South London or the living, breathing, surviving woods on the outskirts of Edinburgh, These images and poems play with real and imagined experiences of the wild girl and woodsman in the lost forests of Britain. Anna Robinson Biography I am a poet, tutor and editor from London. My first collection The Finders of London was published by Enitharmon in 2010. The book was short listed for the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre Prize in 2011. I am currently writer in residence for Coin Street Community Builders heritage project, Waterloo Sights and Sounds and teach at the University of East London. I am poetry editor for Not Shut Up magazine, a creative arts magazine for serving prisoners. My pamphlet, Songs from the flats (Hearing Eye 2006), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. In 2001, I became the first recipient of The Poetry School Scholarship and my poetry was featured in the School’s second anthology, Entering the Tapestry, (Enitharmon 2003). My work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Poetry London, Magma,Brittle Star, the reater, In The Company of Poets (Hearing Eye 2003) and Oxford Poets 2007 (Oxford/Carcanet). I am a Hawthornden Fellow and that is where I began to write about woods.

Into the Woods The Pale, Sore Eyes, Loneliest Child, Same Woods, Back on the Marsh, Songs Drift, Into the Woods, Walking the Wood, Girl Glimpsed, Fallen, Lily, little box The Pale It was then the wood lost its old name, each letter dropping day by day along with its leaves and animals. I found one in my hearth, it had fallen down the chimney. B for Beith, for babies cradles, birch whips to beat and cleanse. A good letter to get when you need a fresh start. Sore Eyes There’s a rowan tree outside the park. The lady of the mountains, when she arrived in the city, would burn it in the spring time in her fireplace and after she’d breathed in the fire smoke – she’d charge out of her flats and dance like a nutter round the stones in the fountain. She’d gargle it after singing in the pub made her voice coarse and vulgar. Her berries are bitter, bitter as ink, her tongue reborn, and her bark, no worse than her bite!

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The Loneliest Child Born on a precipice in what was once a forest the trees knew her well. She loved to run through the valley bottom, through bracken, along the river, listening to the distant sound of dogs swimming. She didn’t know how to seek out company, not even that of the dogs and when the woods were chopped down, she hardened to coal. Since the clean air act, she’s lost, from time to time you’ll smell her brackishness or see one small scaly leaf at the base of a flower. The Same Woods That filtered green, constant leafy murmur, crushing hugeness of it, worlds within worlds, earth, earth and dust; the oak trees beside the old straight track, rowan on the mountains, yew on the long path, box on the hill, boxes in the caves, bracken by the river (under the tower now); Oh Flawless Heart of the North Wind, breath for us. Back On The Marsh There’s something in the kitchen that’s not right. The doorstep’s not washed, the hearth not whitened. No neat row of crosses and they have definitely not been rubbed with oak leaf. The door creaks and I know at least there’s food in the pantry. What will happen if the fog returns and the brittle ice reaches the city? There are splinters of glass all over the floor. I step towards the corner to get the broom. Sweep it away. The bracken is growing under the tower, even as I sweep, nothing I can do. The glass in the dust pan foretells a messy old man who will come when the tower falls, when all that glistens is gone. Songs Drift Songs drift out along with the smell of bluebells and woodbine. They drift along the alleyway where once sheep grazed. They come out and knock on the door saying “is so and so there?” and a voice says “I don’t know love, but come in anyway!” They are forever rolling out their barrel. The piano in the corner and the flowers in a milk bottle hover happy as marsh ghosts on a Saturday night.

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Into The Woods In my sleep the woods are calling so I dress and go, stand awhile between the trees. A mass of people appear around me as if out of a fog dressed in rags, their arms piled high with kindling. I ask them what they want of me, Nothing they say, I ask Who are you? Just ourselves, nothing more, your bones, nothing to see or understand. Are you here for me? I ask and No, they say, We’re just here and then – We’ll leave a trail for you to follow, if you must. Walking The Wood It was like breaching through net, fine, spider made, and all day along the river path I felt I was breaking through with each step. The fine strong hairs of their webs across my cheek, not the heart of the web, more the long guide ropes that tether it to the bracken and I kept chanting ‘Oh Heart of the Web, Heart of Bracken, give me the strength to persevere’. Girl Glimpsed It was the same child she always brings to the woods, the one with red cheeks, who wants to see the deer and never does ‘cause she can’t keep still. She is wearing a red duffle coat and ski-pants that have shrunk, short socks and black plimsolls. Her calves are red with cold. She has got herself dressed and her mother would have a fit if she saw her, the trousers fished out of the bin for the fourth time. The child runs in and out of the bracken like she’s made of pure air.

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Fallen Watching the fallen tree, thinking herself round it and round it – she’s gone tiny, can weave her way through its forest of leggy branches. There is breeze on her light gooseflesh. Now and again, a twig swipes. The grass is patchy, every shade of khaki, reaches her knee in places. It has a life of its own, but not so much that it distracts her from the task. She is here to observe, walk and in walking, know. She looks into the flaky lizard canopy, down to the thatch and out to the wider thicket and sees the vague shapes of her story. Lily It’s only rain dropping out of a gutter but it’s slow enough to be her heart, her tiny silent heart, if you could hear it; and her dead now, not dead and buried but burnt and scattered, the deed done far from anywhere she knew and my heart hanging like a thing caught in a tree. Oh Flawless Heart of the wind, bring her home. Little Box She was in a little box but I never saw it. It was never in my hands. I never smelt or tasted it. I drank the brackish water and let it run over my face. I felt for the little scaly leaf at the base of the flower and picked at it like I pick at that scar on my leg. She was in that little box but I never saw the thing. It was never in my hands.

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Hilke MacIntyre & Gerry Cambridge Hilke MacIntyre Artist Statement Gerry Cambridge and I were a good match for this project in that a fair proportion of our work uses the natural world as an inspiration. It also helped that Gerry kept his poems short. As a relief printer who likes the rough, slightly imperfect and unpredictable side of linocutting I was limited in how small and clean I could cut a poem into a linoplate; the shorter the poem, the bolder it could be. This was an advantage because our answer to the challenge of combining poetry and illustration innovatively was to use the letters and words as the main graphic elements of the image. Freed, at least to a limited degree, from their meaning, the letters became very interesting elements with their variable lines, which created different spaces in the interstices. I found it very enjoyable to adapt the writing in a way that would, hopefully, catch the ‘mood’ of the poem and support it by means of simplified images and symbols—creating an experience for an audience which was a combination both of viewing and reading. Gerry Cambridge Poet Statement Having had a long-time interest and involvement in cross-media projects, I have taken great pleasure in working with Hilke MacIntyre on this collaboration, not only because of our shared interest from an early age in the natural world, but because I immediately liked her artwork; even better, she proved enthusiastic and engaged, exemplifying in my experience the poet Peter Redgrove’s definition of the purpose of creativity: ‘To pass on creativity to others.’ We began with the notion of my writing new work based upon some of Hilke’s initial ideas, but pressures of time quickly made that impractical, at least within the given deadlines—which is not to rule out further collaborations. However, in discussions in Edinburgh, Hilke picked up on my interest in typography as graphic object and offered to lettercut by hand several of my poems and integrate the whole into a design/artwork of her own, using the subject matter of the poems as inspiration. To start this process, I sent her a batch of 10 new poems, two of which she chose and which have been offered to this exhibition. A further poem I made a typographic setting of, for which she provided the artwork, though there wasn’t time to offer this as a finished piece. At all stages we had a lovely degree of mutual feedback and discussion. We plan further collaborations, possibly cards, and perhaps a book. Hilke MacIntyre Biography Hilke MacIntyre was born 1964 in Germany and studied at the College for Art and Architecture in Kiel. After a Diploma in Architecture she worked for various architects until she moved to Scotland in 1995 and concentrated on art. She is now working as an artist in a small village near St Andrews. Her paintings, linocuts and ceramic reliefs are exhibited in galleries throughout Britain. Her work has been selected many times for the annual show at the Royal Scottish Academy. She works in a simplified figurative style and enjoys using bold shapes, as well as strong colours and patterns. Linocuts and woodcuts are her preferred method of printmaking: as media, their directness, hands-on nature, and the slight roughness of the line cut by a knife suits her style. Usually she uses only three or four colours and keeps edition numbers low—up to a maximum of 35. She prints all her linocuts and woodcuts at home on a big relief printing press shared with her husband, the artist Ian MacIntyre. The world around her, especially nature, animals and people are her main sources of inspiration. Particular influences are primitive art, artists of the early 20th century and contemporary design. www.macintyre-art.com

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Gerry Cambridge Biography Gerry Cambridge is a poet and editor with substantial interest in print design and typography as well as a background in natural history photography. His publications include Notes for Lighting a Fire (HappenStance Press, 2012, 2nd edition 2013), shortlisted in the poetry section of the Scottish Book of the Year Award, 2013; Aves (Essence Press, 2007; reprinted 2008), prose poems about wild birds; Madame Fi Fi’s Farewell and Other Poems (Luath, 2003); and ‘Nothing but Heather!’: Scottish Nature in Poems, Photographs and Prose (Luath, 1999; 2nd edition, 2008). Seamus Heaney called his long poem ‘Blue Sky, Green Grass’, winner of The Calum Macdonald Memorial Award in 2004, “a wonderful paean, [allowing] in so much that the usual poem keeps out—sheer, archaic joy: hymns to light, praise of the creatures, tales of the usual, names of the people and the places”. Cambridge’s poetry is anthologized in The Faber Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2000) edited by Douglas Dunn, and The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry (2005). In his early twenties he was one of the youngest ever regular freelancers for the Reader’s Digest magazine, which at the time had a monthly circulation of 1.5 million; he contributed 34,000 words on American poets for the Oxford Encyclopaedia of American Literature (2004); from 2000–2006, he wrote nine 12,000 word essays for Scribners’ British Writers and American Writers textbook series. Since 1994 Gerry has published and edited The Dark Horse, a transatlantic poetry magazine with an international reputation. www.gerrycambridge.com

ON A HILLTOP Today what arrives from the far sea dance-shivers about our feet the daisies in thousands, raises between an invisible finger and thumb strands of your long black hair; such a vast thing and yet not too proud to tremble a daisy as set those wide woods glittering, or to lift the wisps from your brow here as move that cloud.

MINIMALIST In the need for sparseness, such subtraction one can take too far as if there were, or something took, a wry satisfaction in reducing much to little. Some things, of course, are not designed to be singled so— say, flesh from bone, despite the pleasure of the spine’s increasing definition under fingertips, as if one prized that shining architecture above its dwindling twin: like a careful archaeologist revealing a Skara Brae out of sand that meant its saving and its end.

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Rona MacLean & Molly Vogel Rona Maclean Joint Statement Molly sent me samples of her work and had a look at the kind of images I create. The poem we chose is the lovely, poignant ‘Isle of Skye’. To me it conjured up memories of an island I love. Molly’s use of language has a beautiful simplicity and I could sense that the Isle of Skye was a place dear to her and one she felt bound to. We wanted to include a hand written element and that it should be Molly’s writing we used, a map fragment should feature and that there should be at least one tree included in the image. Molly comes from Thousand Oaks, California, white beam and birch figure in the poem and my most recent mezzotints have been of ghostly trees. I was keen to try to produce something unlike my usual small scale etchings and mezzotints which are not particularly colourful. I embarked upon a number of experimental screen prints. I played around with a variety of colour combinations and quickly decided that I liked the red, blue and ochre washes of my second experiment. I also liked the grey paper I had used which seemed more harmonious than the others I had tried. I decided to include a drawing of a white beam and the line in the poem ‘I stand between white beam and beech’ plus the last line which I think is particularly lyrical - ‘There is no wait in a flower the too late bower’. These two lines are in Molly’s hand. Initially I had intended writing the names of all the flowers in the poem in shades of blue in the area above the silhouette of the Cuillins to form a ‘sky’. When I tried this it just didn’t work. I had used a fragment of the OS map of Skye over the red landscape and further experiments suggested that the map should go all the way to the top of the print. This worked far better than the flower names. Molly Vogel Poet Statement Rona has a natural ability to depict scenes of simplicity: a solitary tree, boats in the harbour, fish in a pond. Yet her artwork is not simple. Her proclivity for colour makes a quiet scene vibrant, as does her expertise in multiple art forms, from etchings to mezzotints. As an experimenter in many forms myself, my collaboration with Rona proved to be a rewarding one. Our shared love of bright palettes and mixed mediums spoke to one poem in particular, ‘Isle of Skye’, which contains a little bit of both; colour being an important element in the poem, as the flora of northern Scotland is recalled and form becoming an essential medium, the poem is not quite an ode, not quite a sonnet. This is reflected in Rona’s interpretation of the poem, a collage of maps, hand-written phrases and paper, embodying the essence of the poem in a living piece of art. Molly Vogel Biography Molly Vogel is a poet from Thousand Oaks, California. She is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow.

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ISLEOFSKYE I wanted to know where love comes from without you in the world, I am drowning through the port at Mallaig, across thirty acres of heathered heath, the old northeast glebe keep my pockets full of flowers. And then I remember: it is you I miss in the fetterless body of every living name: bluebell, bog myrtle, yellow rattle, thistle. You are every shade of grey, root, and twinflower. When love is not enough, what is left but primrose, bearberry, the weightless crux of water-lily? The yew yawns a psalm, the rood-bloom bows. Tell me our story with/out referent, with half-moon reverence. I want to tell you what I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say most nights, take my hand along the edge of it all is no line, only fond foolishness, how I love the seriousness of your fingers and the way you word my half-name like amen. I stand between white-beam and beech like men. Where is my compass rose amongst the rose garden? Give all my longing to the River Brittle down in the valley. There is no wait in a flower, the too late bower.

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Norman McBeath & Kathleen Jamie Norman McBeath & Kathleen Jamie Joint Statement A successful collaboration, like any other work, needs direction - an awareness of possibilities and a vision of the outcome. We thought it would therefore be a good idea to look first at what our contribution to The Written Image might look like - what we would be working towards. Given that two fundamental elements of the work were more or less decided - text and image - we focused, perhaps more than any other aspect of the collaboration, on how best to present the finished work in a way that would not only be true to our own individual styles but that would also somehow acknowledge the collaboration itself. From the start it was clearly important to both of us that each piece, the written and the image, should be able to stand on its own and at the same time in a way in which they could bring something to one another. In the end there was no doubt. We were both drawn to the simplicity and elegance of a matching, two-piece work, side by side: a reflection of our work alone and of our work together. Making this key decision on presentation, in a way, freed us to look more closely at the detailed content of our piece and explore aspects of our work that we shared. Each of us is in various ways interested in the environment - its appearance and influence on people’s behaviour. But also the opposite: the way people’s behaviour can sometimes shape the environment or leave traces of what they have been doing. It was a line from Kathleen’s poem, The Beach, which finally decided which poem we wanted to use - ‘hoping for the marvellous’ - as this seemed to describe a central approach running through both our work. Each of us felt strongly that the connection between poem and image should not be literal or descriptive and that the bond between them should instead be evocative, and in a sense, drawing on emotion. In this way, each work could have the freedom to spark the viewer’s imagination while at the same time offering support to its counterpart. We therefore chose an image of mine (a photogravure) which had clarity of form yet retained ambiguity. Our second piece, a limited edition, boxed set of poem and photogravure is an alternative to the more familiar form of glazed works which we hope will encourage inclusion of our collaboration in permanent collections and therefore extend the life of The Written Image well beyond the last touring date of the exhibition. Norman McBeath Biography Norman Mc Beath is a photographer and printmaker whose work focuses on people and places. The National Portrait Galleries in London and Edinburgh have over fifty of his portraits in their permanent collections. He has recently collaborated with the poets Paul Muldoon, Plan B (Enitharmon Press, 2009) and Robert Crawford, Simonides (Easel Press, 2011). Simonides was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and exhibited at Yale University (2012) and the Poetry Foundation in Chicago (2013). Kathleen Jamie Biography KATHLEEN JAMIE was born in 1962. Her poetry collections to date include The Overhaul, which won the 2012 Costa Poetry Prize and The Tree House which won both the Forward Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. Kathleen Jamie also writes non-fiction including the highly regarded Findings and recently, Sightlines. Kathleen is Chair of Poetry at Stirling University. She lives in Fife.

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The Beach Now this big westerlyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blown itself out, letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s drive to the storm beach. A few brave souls will be there already, eyeing the driftwood, the heaps of frayed blue polyprop rope, cut loose, thrown back at us What a species still working the same curved bay, all of us hoping for the marvellous, all hankering for a changed life.

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Gillian Murray & Brian Johnstone Gillian Murray Artist Statement The two screenprints I have printed for the ‘Written Image’ collaboration have been inspired by Brian Johnstone’s remarkable poems, ‘A Proof of the Uists’ and ‘Behind Your Eyes’. Brian writes poems inspired by many fascinating subjects but we both found that we had a love for the landscape particularly of Scotland and the Mediterranean Over the past few years I have made small trips up to the west coast of Scotland and Brian’s ‘A Proof of the Uists’ resonates with those times when I have sat and stared at the islands whilst sketching them. His words capture the views and thoughts I hope to convey in my prints. The poem ‘Behind Your Eyes’ made me think of a different kind of landscape. It reminded me of my memories whilst drawing in the woods, by the river Eden, Stenkrith, Cumbria. The trees looked very dark and monochromatic against a new deep snowfall. The winter sun is sitting low, just behind the valley. Brian’s poem takes me straight back to that moment of sketching and once again how I felt. Brian and I both had similar views on how we would like to put his poems and my work together. The words of the poems are incorporated to flow through the printed landscape. In the print ‘River Tracks’, the poem meanders along the riverbank. In ‘Scrolling the Horizon’, the poem follows the islands with a shift in the colour of the text to reflect whether it is land or sea. Brian Johnstone Poet Statement On being introduced to Gillian Murray at the first Written Image session, we immediately discovered a mutual interest in responding to landscape in our chosen media. While I write on a wide range of subjects, rural landscape in all its many guises, has always been a preoccupation of mine. Thus, as early as that first meeting, Gillian and I agreed that it was this area of our interest that we would pursue for the project. My first experience of Gillian’s work was exploring the images on her website where her sensitive evocation of land forms and seascapes impressed me greatly. This was followed by a visit to her studio where I was able to view a wide range of images both finished and in different states of completion. This gave me a considerable insight into the screen printing process and Gillian’s own approach to its use. This flowed naturally into an agreement on how the text of my poems could be integrated into the proposed images. Gillian had already seen a selection of my landscape poems and decided to use two of these to which I was keen to have a visual art response. The first, ‘A Proof of the Uists’ chimed almost magically with her own response to the landscape of the Western Isles; the second, ‘Behind Your Eyes’ was less specific, but evoked for Gillian the landscape of the Eden Valley in Cumbria, an area with which I have family connections. Viewing the subsequent prints at a further meeting I was struck by how they add a new layer of meaning to the poems and build on their imagery in a sympathetic and enriching manner.

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Gillian Murray Biography Gillian studied Fine Art, Printmaking at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, graduating in 1993. She became an employee at Edinburgh Printmakers in 1996 where she currently runs the screenprinting department. This involves working on print projects with a host of local, national and international artists as well as teaching courses in screenprinting and collagraphs. Born in Perth and having spent her teenage years in rural Auchterarder, Gillian has a great love for the countryside and being outdoors. She is fascinated by the landscape from the textures and colours to its form and composition. Her work reflects the serenity she feels in the landscapes she encounters and the need to escape the ‘clutter’ of the city and the busyness of her thoughts. A selection of recent exhibitions includes, the annual shows of the Society of Scottish Artist’s and the Royal Scottish Academy Open. Work exhibited in ‘Big Print/Small Print’, Wroclaw, Poland, the Dancing Light Gallery, (Lamancha, West Linton), Gallery Ten (Edinburgh), Affordable Art Fair (Battersea, London), Edinburgh Printmakers (Edinburgh), The Scottish Arts Club (Edinburgh). Brian Johnstone Biography Brian Johnstone is a poet whose poems ‘evoke...a sense of spiritual immanence in their slow still spaces’ (Scottish Literary Journal) while being ‘full of stilled moments and nicely shaped incidents’ (Scotland on Sunday). His work has appeared throughout Scotland, in the UK, in America and in various European countries. He has published five collections to date, his latest being The Book of Belongings (Arc, 2009). His next collection Dry Stone Work will be appearing from Arc in 2014. His poems have been translated into more than ten different languages; in 2009 Terra Incognita, a small collection of his poems in English and Italian translation, was published by L’Officina (Vicenza). Over the years Brian Johnstone has collaborated with a wide range of artists in various media, ranging from traditional music to jazz, from artist’s books to poetry film, and from sculpture to printmaking. A founder and former Festival Director of StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, Brian Johnstone has appeared at numerous international poetry festivals from Macedonia to Nicaragua, as well as at many festivals and literary venues across the UK. http:// brianjohnstonepoet.co.uk/

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BEHIND YOUR EYES There are times when you stop in your tracks, halted by the scent of a blossom, the curve of a particular leaf; times when these things shift like the wind from absence to absence; and all of you lurches forwards, foot before foot, your mind one turn in the path from recognition and this is one of these: a tree lies, particular of aspect, along the way; a light blinks across the valley; and darkness reaches out to touch you, as this does, welling up from somewhere you have been, you think, before but did not know it, did not recognise the moment that takes you now by something more than just surprise; like something living, palpable, that rustles in the underbrush, hides behind your eyes.

A Proof of the Uists No pencil, ruler, mapping pen could graph these islands the way light and shadow, scrolling their profile along the horizon, show them today. Current and tide race, cumulus, stratus texture the page they glide upon, while sunlight – sea reflected – streaks like bog cotton tugged in the wind, cutting the lines which swell to peak after peak, each its own distance away. Their bulk, distilled to a thread of low and lochan herded shore, lies like a strap of bladder wrack along the world’s edge. The pilot pen steers the eye, draws the line across the pupil and the iris, bites it, etches in. Vaternish, Isle of Skye

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Paul Musgrove & Paula Jennings Paul Musgrove & Paula Jennings Joint Statement The lines of poetry for this collaboration come from a poem sequence, Under a Spell Place, in the voice of a person with advanced Alzheimers. The poems reveal the narrator’s insights and emotions veiled by apparent incoherence but full of an urgency to be heard. The language is intense and fractured. Here is the whole of a poem from which lines have been taken:

Everybody’s lost their part in this country that we’re in we see it we think it but we’re not in it altogether one thing’s taken off then another thing’s taken off everybody’s lost their part in this place it goes on itself it moves so far then not any further that’s the mean part of it and you hear the dogs talking about it they come here with red colours and left-alone colours and absolutely bright whites I don’t know whose house this is Our creative partnership has been a very positive one. Dementia has touched both of our lives in different ways and perhaps this has fuelled the dynamic interplay of text and image. The project has given us insight into each other’s very different processes and priorities. Paula’s tour of Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop was an eye-opener as the physicality and complexity of printing processes was unmasked. In his turn, Paul discovered that a lost hyphen, let alone a changed line ending, was a cause for alarm. Across the gulf of different art forms (or art-forms?) we found a common enthusiasm for layered images and half-hidden resonances. From the start we liked each other’s work and could see how we might develop the theme of dementia. We’ve emerged from this adventure with work that we feel expresses and reinforces each other’s intentions. Paul Musgrove Biography Trained in Art & Design at St Albans College of Art, Paul was tutored in printmaking by John Brunsdon and Anthony Harris along with design tutor Dick Powell. Went on to do BA(Hons) in 3-D Design at Manchester Polytechnic, specializing in furniture design/ manufacturing and hot glass making, graduated in 1980. After college Paul worked on the archaeological excavations at West Heslerton, North Yorkshire. Worked as site photographer and site supervisor, under site director Dominic Powlesland. Page 50

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Joined “Glassworks” hot glass studio in Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, Scotland to assist in setting up workshop with Jenny Antonio. Received an SDA new craftsman grant for the Glassworks in 1982. In 1983 joined “The Tent Co” the organizing body of the Festival Craft Tent. Also became council member of Scottish Crafts Centre, Edinburgh. During 1986 was glass maker in residence at Strawberry Studios, Jersey, C I and made Co-director of the Nicholson Gallery, Edinburgh. During early 1990 dissolved Glassworks and started working at Forest Fire Ltd – wood heating specialists in St Mary’s Street, Edinburgh with co-director Stewart McKenna. July 2008 Forest Fire Ltd – closed and sold business to pursue artistic endeavour. Attended course in photo-polymer etching at Edinburgh printmakers in early 2009 with Alfons Bytautas and have since been practising as printmaker. During 2010 continued to make prints, numerous exhibitions around UK as well as teaching courses in photo etching. 2011 saw two one man shows in The Linenhall, Co Mayo, Ireland and Scampston Hall, North Yorkshire. Also started the Spektrum print collective and organised the inaugural exhibition “First Press” at the Whitespace Gallery in Edinburgh. 2012 one man show at the North Yorkshire National Parks visitors centre and various other shows. In late 2012 set up Gallery TEN in Edinburgh with creative partner and fellow printmaker Gill Tyson and continue to have print exhibitions by a variety of artists. For more details or to contact – www.musworks.co.uk Paula Jennings Biography After obtaining an M.A. in English and Moral Philosophy from St Andrews University, I have pursued a wavering career path - from toilet cleaner to organic smallholder, from factory worker to community worker, from therapeutic masseuse to evening class tutor. Alongside these adventures I have been writing poetry, with the support of Scottish Arts Council bursaries and Hawthornden Fellowships. My poems appear in literary mags, national newspapers and anthologies, and I’ve published two poetry collections: Singing Lucifer, Onlywomen Press From the Body of the Green Girl, HappenStance Press I regularly read at poetry events, most recently Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (sponsored by StAnza) and Dundee Literary Festival. I was involved in Farlin during 2012/13, a project facilitated by Shetland Arts and Fife Contemporary Art and Crafts, linking poets and craftworkers in Fife and Shetland. Paired with Helen Robertson (who knits in silver wire), both of us were surprised and pleased with the new work generated by our responses to each other’s art. The Written Image has been a great opportunity to continue with this movement across art forms. For several years I’ve used poetry in creative communication with people who have dementia, sometimes making collaborative poems. I also work with poetry students, in classes, workshops and individually. I live in the East Neuk of Fife and am currently completing a third book.

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Wonder if we really wanted to go somewhere it would be a long walk on a short pier and we would think it wonderful well it has its own wonder when it comes to these times it leaves everybody wondering

Moving to the home

when you saw that shape you knew you were on your way it was absolute reality to get through it and that’s what it was on the other side I didn’t go home because it was no use doing it you just had to leave it the cat’s gone and the dog’s gone we can’t take it where we’re going you are you and you are all pulled around that’s what you look like it’s the I that gets crackered

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Leena Nammari & Robert Crawford Leena Nammari & Robert Crawford Joint Statement We met for the first time at the Scottish Poetry Library, and, however nervous, got on well from the start – not least because we shared an instinct to sit down quietly in a corner together, talk and focus. Robert, who comes from a Scottish Christian background, showed Leena, who comes from a Palestinian Muslim background, several poems. Leena had brought with her two prints on sandcoloured paper that unfolded horizontally to reveal panoramic images. One of the poems, ‘Thread’ – about faith hanging by a thread -- spoke to Leena in a way that resonated with images she had been collecting of mashrabiy-yat (Arabic for ‘hanging balconies’). ‘I just love them,’ she said, ‘they are just hanging suspended, part of the air, part of the stone walls, part of the stone walls, part of the street, looking on to the world from within ancient walls.’ Leena showed Robert some prints she had made: some of windows and grilles, and one (in memory of a friend) showing a bare desert landscape containing a settlement. She also emailed him images of mashrabiy-yat. So it looked as if the collaboration would involve thread and hanging balconies. The thin verticality of the short-lined poem and of the balconies themselves called (Robert thought) for verticality in the print; Leena’s idea was that words should be stitched or stippled on to the image – a photograph that she had taken when visiting her family. Leena remembers Robert suggesting that a gold thread might look good; he remembers only suggesting that red thread would too readily evoke blood. As he pondered not just the image of the hanging balconies but also what Leena had said about her feelings for her family in Ramallah and her home-country, Robert wanted to write a further poem that addressed or drew on these more specifically. For a while it seemed the poem would not come, or would emerge only as something too willed and dutiful. Eventually, after he met Leena at Edinburgh Printmakers and she confirmed to him that the mashrabiy-yat were associated particularly with women, who peered out of these slim cages high on the walls of houses, the poem ‘Hanging Balconies, Jerusalem’ came into shape. Leena settled on the idea of a triptych, to echo the trinity, in an edition of three. The images would be screenprinted with three different coloured skies. There would be two different, yet echoing images: same place, different angles. One image would be clearly defined; the other would be less detailed and feature contrast. Invoking hanging balconies, walls, passage, blockage, shoring up and looking out, the images themselves would be suspended from the wall, with no protection from glass, directly staring at the viewer, nailed to the wall. Stippling the poems involved Leena working late into the night. At once highlighted and blurred, the words are surrounded by dots that can be touched. This collaboration is literally about feeling as well as images and ideas. Leena Nammari Biography Most of the artworks I make reflect my thoughts of home. I return home almost every year, I photograph places known and unknown. I visit places not frequented except by the local person, which though I have not live there, I still consider myself to be one. Though I take photographs of what I see, I place upon them a nostalgia and a longing, as all Palestinians tend to do. It is state we all find ourselves in. My work is subtly loaded with politics, politics of the majority and of the personal. As all Palestinians, I have my fair share of personal brushes with the occupation, whether personally through my school days, through my frequent visits home, or through my family history, stories told and untold, mythologies started and believed in. All the images I make have something amiss in them, a sadness, an abandonment, a loss, or something wrong, unclear, too bright, too dark.

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Robert Crawford Biography Robert Crawford was born in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, in 1959; he works as a professor in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. His seven collections of poetry include A Scottish Assembly (1990), Masculinity (1996), and Full Volume (2008). A new collection, Testament, will be published by Cape in 2014. With Mick Imlah he edited The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. As well as his biography of Robert Burns, The Bard (2009), Robert has written a number of prose books ranging from The Savage and the City in the Work of T. S. Eliot (1987) to Scotland’s Books (2007) and On Glasgow and Edinburgh (2013). Recently he has completed Bannockburns: Scottish Independence and Literary Imagination 1314-2014, which will be published in January. He is writing a biography of T. S. Eliot. Simonides, his collaboration with the photographer Norman McBeath, was published in 2011 by Easel Press and was the subject of an exhibition that has toured in Britain and America for the last two years; most recently it was shown in the gallery of the Poetry Foundation, Chicago. ‘I love the visual arts, and working with visual artists. I like the combination of robustness, imagination, longing, sadness and integrity in Leena Nammari’s work, and its focus on ideas of home and independence – ideas I have pondered in different, but sometimes related, contexts. Working with Leena was strengthening – as well as great fun.’

HANGING BALCONY,

THREAD

JERUSALEM

My faith Hangs by a thread. It always has. No point Spending long Going over it, Worrying, Will it snap? Will it go? Is it the wrong Kind of faith? Better just to take it And sew.

for Leena Nammari Young, Shy, Or grieving In old age, Stand On tired feet In that tall, Filigree cage Hung On the wall And peer out Through heat At the small, Blistered land, Dizzy With hope, High Above the busy, Unwavering street, And hear the call Of a quavering voice, And think Day After day About making a choice About leaving, About how to stay.

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Morvern Olding & Samuel Tongue Morvern Olding & Samuel Tongue Joint Statement An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, the raconteur is a spinner of yarns - but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice, their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the written page a textus, which means cloth. Robert Bringhurst, “The Elements of Typographic Style.” On our first meeting, Morvern and I discovered our etymologically linked obsessions: for her, screen-printing onto textiles; for me, printed texts. I had become fascinated with the eco-critical philosophical work of Jacques Derrida (another textual obsessive) and Timothy Morton, especially around the idea of writing and language as bound up with our definitions of homo sapiens and how we are somehow different and opposed to other animals. But what if these forms of signification—that seemingly belong to and constitute the human—extend and limit our cognitive and representational abilities? Morvern and I decided to work around the title “the human animal covers itself in text” in order to explore these ideas and my poems became coverings, warnings, brandings, and markings across different materials and textures, including, most literally, human skin. Our collaboration forced me to think more about the materiality of language, the glyphs that can exist beyond the page, and how the human animal must cover itself and its world in text; that textus, as cloth and writing, domesticates wilderness and is a way of making home, as in the Greek oikos, the root of eco-logy and eco-nomics. But thoughts are strings—like Arachne’s threads—and can also be used for hunting and feeding; so we worked up some warning signs here too, language become visible. The translation of Samuel’s poems grew in stages, our in depth discussions on our theme and possible applications giving me a visual starting point to develop and bring to our conversation. As I studied the poems the artwork became centred around spiritual and religious symbols: the shrine or altar, the scroll, the branding and the prayer flag. In each it is a translation of an original idea; for example the Bhuddist prayer flags becoming warnings rather than messages of prayer. Samuel gave me a new language to work with, one which links us back to the origin of writing. From this I rewrote the alphabet in different breakdowns of glyph shapes, creating unreadable fonts and sigils based on old texts. To read the words I had to bring the shapes back to a recognisable place, but in the mandala I could still use these forms to read the words in a round. Titles became important in my understanding of the poems and I drew significance from the words that titled the work, they are a key to translating the meaning in the pieces and our title for the works The Human Animal Covers Itself In Text is a key to each.

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Movern Olding Biography Morvern Odling is a textile artist and photographer who graduated from with a first class Honours Degree from Heriot Watt’s School of Textiles and Design in 2012. Her graduate work was awarded The Worshipful Company of Dyers of the City of London’s Colour Prize for the best use of colour within a final year project, specifically in recognition of technical innovation and expertise. Following graduating and having set up her own screen printing studio at Superclub Studios in the autumn of 2012 she has continued to develop fine art printed textiles for exhibition around the country. Her work has applications in photography, installation and performance; outcomes which she will be exploring in the post of Artist in Residence in Edinburgh College of Art’s textiles department. Alongside her own solo projects the post includes more collaborative research including 3D printing and dyestuff chemical processing for textiles. More of her work can be found at www.morvernodling.co.uk Samuel Tongue Biography Samuel Tongue has published poems in numerous journals and anthologies including North Light: The Anthology of Clydebuilt 3, Magma, Gutter, The Lumen and In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights. He was selected as a member of the 2010 Clydebuilt Poetry Apprenticeship Project, mentored by Liz Lochhead. He won the International Ragged Raven Press competition (2011) and was highly commended in the William Souter Prize (2011)—the poems appeared in the subsequent anthologies Nothing Left to Burn and Stone Tide respectively. With colleagues from the Clydebuilt Project, he performed in a special showcase at the 2012 StAnza International Poetry Festival. He is a co-organiser of the regular event ‘Poetry at The Ivory’ on Glasgow’s southside, and co-editor (with Kathrine Sowerby) of fourfold, a new pamphlet with a focus on the short poem. He currently teaches World Religions and The Media Bible at the University of Glasgow and tweets about poetry and religion at @SamuelTongue.

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Cat Outram & Ken Cockburn Cat Outram Artist Statement I met Ken for the first time at the official launch of THE WRITTEN IMAGE project. We quickly discovered that something on ‘Orkney’ would be a possible subject as I was just about to visit and he had been there last year. He sent me the poem he’d already written, which he had done as a composition constrained by certain poetic parameters, and suggested I could perhaps to do something similar with my images. So I spent the summer working on sets of images, keeping each to a size or colour or shape to match Ken’s idea, till, in the middle of September he came to EP to look at what I had done. He really liked the long landscape pictures and the idea of doing an artist’s book, so I agreed to develop these, also choosing to use a limited colour palette: yellow ochre and grey as these are the colours of the stone Orkney mainly consists of. Ken suggested doing ‘circle’ poems, short one liners that would fit between my images, which would also represent the idea of ‘an island’, the cycles of nature etc. However, since there was little time left I decided not to do the book and we chose the four images we liked best: the ferry, the farm, the beach and Brodgar. Ken took these themes and returned to the memories of his own trip to write the final four verses of the poem used here. Cat Outram and Ken Cockburn CO: We met for the first time at the launch of THE WRITTEN IMAGE project. ‘Orkney’ seemed to be a possible subject, as I was just about to visit, and Ken had been there last year. He sent me a poem he’d written from that trip, which used certain poetic constraints, and suggested I could try something similar with my images. KC: Before my 2012 trip, I’d been playing David Byrne’s Rei Momo in the car; his lyrics are metrically regular and use strong rhymes, but narratively and thematically disjointed. On Orkney I wrote a lot of simple, unconnected four-beat lines. When we came home I wanted to make a poem for my daughter’s sixteenth birthday, so I made a 16-line poem, in four 4-lines stanzas; the lines were chosen and combined based on rhyme, and there was no attempt to make a coherent narrative, or focus on a specific place or subject. I also included a line from a temperance song I came across, maybe in Kirkwall Museum. Overall though it felt like an accurate portrait of the places we’d visited and shared. CO: When I returned from Orkney we met again briefly to look at my first sketches. KC: Then I travelled to the Hebrides in July and August. We talked vaguely about ‘Islands’ as a theme, so we could combine Cat’s Orkney sketches and my Hebridean verses; but each were really too place-specific to merge. CO: I spent the summer working on sets of images, keeping each to a size or colour or shape to try to match Ken’s idea of constraints, but with no idea which to develop further. When we met again in mid-September Ken particularly liked the long landscape pictures and the idea of doing an artist’s book, so I planned to develop these, also choosing to use a limited colour palette: yellow, ochre and grey, the main colours of Orkney stone. Ken suggested ‘circle’ poems, short one liners fitting between my images, which would also represent visually an island, the cycles of nature, etc. But there was so little time left I decided not to do the book. KC: We settled on four images that seemed to give a good overview of Orkney: FERRY (geography), FARM (economy), BEACH (ecology), and BRODGAR (archaeology). I returned to my 2012 notes, and also those I’d made for an unrealised project at John O’Groats, and composed for each image a new 4-line stanza; more thematically guided than last summer’s poem, and now using lighter half-rhymes. The order in which the stanzas can be read is interchangeable, as at that point there was still the possibility Cat would frame each image separately, and that they might be viewed individually. CO: I decided to print all the images on the one plate as it felt right to see them all together, with Ken’s handwritten words adding extra layers of memory and experience, a better whole.

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Ken Cockburn Biography Ken Cockburn is a poet, translator, editor and writing tutor, based in Edinburgh. Formerly Fieldworker and Assistant Director at the Scottish Poetry Library, in 2006 he was the first writer-inresidence at the John Archive, National Library of Scotland, and was awarded the Arts Foundation Fellowship for Literary Translation 2008. A Creative Scotland ‘Vital Spark’ Award in 2010 enabled Ken and Alec Finlay to undertake The Road North, a word-map of contemporary Scotland guided by the 17th century Japanese poet Basho, whose Oku-no-hosomichi (Back Roads to Far Towns) is one of the masterpieces of travel literature. He is currently undertaking another touring project with Alec Finlay, Out of Books, based on Boswell and Johnson’s Highland tour of 1773, in particular the books they read, and referred to, as they travelled. Recent publications include Overheard Overlooked: Found Poems (2011); Ink, with artists ~in the fields (2011); and Snapdragon, translations of poems by Arne Rautenberg (2012). www.kencockburn.co.uk www.theroadnorth.co.uk www.out-of-books.com

Orkney we sail past Stroma’s empty fields the Maidens grind the sea-gods’ salt binoculars to scan the scene the latent power the races hold divers down among the wrecks I don’t know what it is I’ve found a haar drifts in across the rocks the crab’s blue shell fades in the sun the Romans came and saw and left Vikings named themselves in runes a hoard of shards the dig unearthed the sacred grove is made of stone unfurl your banner to the breeze starlings wheel across the sky a spotted orchid in the verge the wind is in the blades and flags

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Frank Pottinger & Diana Hendry Frank Pottinger & Diana Hendry Joint Statement This collaborative work consists of a model stage and four flats (or backdrops) with footlight bulbs. Each flat represents some aspect of the poem which is slotted into an area below the stage with the title clearly visible and the poem itself easily accessed. The poem imagines that the actors have left the stage and the flats begin a conversation. As the actors use words, the flats use art. The reference to various playwrights – Shakespeare, Chekov, Beckett – are visualised in the flats. The model theatre stage was made from plywood with four upright litho printed flats. Each of these has a shaped perspex front upon which the eponymous footlights are cheerfully reflected. There is a tiny on/off switch at the back which activates them. In visits to our homes and studios, we spent some time getting to know each other’s work and discussing possible ideas for collaborating. Some of the themes we considered were lost loves, islands, the seasons and a response to the poems of George Herbert. We chose The Footlight Flats because we both liked the idea of something we hoped would be both witty and playful and yet carry suggestions about words, art and time. The work matched Frank’s interest in theatre art and Diana’s work as a children’s writer. Frank Pottinger Biography Born Edinburgh. First employment, apprentice engineer. National Service followed and a return to trade and preparation for entry to ECA where I gained a Diploma in Sculpture. Moray House next and several years teaching in city schools before an appointment to Aberdeen College of Education. Returning to Edinburgh, teaching continued part time at ECA for two years before retiring and devoting myself to my own work as sculptor and printmaker. I have received the following awards: the IBM and Mobil North Sea awards, the Wm. J. Macaulay and the Scottish Arts Club prizes. I have been elected to full membership of the Royal Scottish Academy. Some commissions have been for : The Woodland Trust, Heriot Watt University, LASMO, and the Western Isles Health Board. I obtained Artist Residencies in the following places: Regensburg Bavaria, stone carving, Europas Parkas, Lithuania, a work for the forest sculpture trail, RSA Western Isles and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop Aberdeenshire for bronze casting. Diana Hendry Biography Diana Hendry has published six collections of poems, the latest being The Seed-box Lantern: New & Selected Poems (Mariscat). Others are Making Blue, Borderers, (both Peterloo), Late Love & Other Whodunnits (Peterloo/Mariscat), Twelve Lilts: Psalms & Responses and Sparks! (a poetic collaboration with Tom Pow). Both Mariscat. Diana’s short stories have been published widely and broadcast on radio. She has written nearly forty books for children. Harvey Angell which won a Whitbread Award in 1991 and last year The Seeing which was short-listed for a Costa Award and for a Scottish Children’s Book Award. Recently she has written the libretto for The Pied Piper (music by John G. Mortimer) which was performed in Switzerland. Diana has worked as a journalist, English teacher and creative writing tutor. Following a year as Writer in Residence at Dumfries & Galloway Royal Infirmary she moved to Edinburgh. From 2008– 2010 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Edinburgh University.

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The Footlight Flats: To Whom It May Concern Of course we talk together in the night, in the dark. Like toys when the children sleep. About being Backdrops. About scenes we’ve been, laughs we’ve had at exits and entrances. Pursued by a bear – that was our favourite. All that strut and fret. So many poor players. It’s the action we care about, not the characters. And the writers of course. They know how important we are. We’ve worked with the best - Will, Chris, Oscar, Anton, Sam –we’re a match for them. We do time. Seasons, centuries. Flashbacks. Fast forwards. And place.Verona, Egypt, various palaces, Abigail’s lounge, Jack’s beanstalk, another part of the heath. Sometimes we’ve been fooled. I mean we believed Godot was really going to come. And now and again, a few words or phrases just snag our timbers/cardboard/plastic. All my pretty ones – that was a line really upset us. You think it’s words that matter. We’re the imagination’s eyes. Is it time? Would somone switch on the footlights?

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Linda Kosciewicz Fleming & Dorothy Alexander Linda Kosciewicz Fleming & Dorothy Alexander Joint Statement Two pieces based on a common theme were produced. Maiden Feather and Cartoon Bird: an installation comprising photogravure and soundsculpture film. A collaboration between Linda Kosciewicz (images, sound, film) and Dorothy Alexander (words). Our first meeting at Scottish Poetry Library established an immediate rapport in terms of working practices and how they might fuse. Linda’s focus on persona, particularly in terms of face and body, and three-dimensional image, and Dorothy’s on-going experiments with random process and narrative led to the construction of a mask with integrated found narrative. Both artists agreed that the work should be all new and that random processes should be involved. This led to an hour long random word conversation in which the starting point was makeup – a word taken at random from a women’s magazine. Both artists then took it in turns to respond with a new word until an A1 page was full. This conversation took place in June on the stair landing of the Scottish Arts Club. The project continued over the summer: Linda collected images of classical sculpture and started working on ideas around fragmented persona which merged elements of these found images with images of her own body while Dorothy worked with the page of random words to amass a series of short poems and resonant phrases around which narratives were written. These narratives would surround and include the words of the poems and would take Linda’s images as their inspiration. The poems would be differentiated in some way from the narratives. An underlying theme emerged: the ongoing struggle caused by the mismatch between female experience and the perception of the female persona. The word bird became highly significant. After several attempts at fusing image with text on the page, an accompanying sound piece was composed by Linda which incorporates the voices of both artists and music composed by Linda. In addition, Linda used birdsong and in particular the song of the skylark and nightingale which both feature in the narrative created by Dorothy. The project has been an enjoyable and fruitful one. Both artists have been inspired towards new directions in their working practice: Linda discovering ways to use new materials and images and Dorothy working with images and embedded words. Linda Kosciewicz Fleming Biography Words, especially poetry has been a major influence throughout my creative career and I would love this opportunity to work with a poet to develop a a piece of work in partnership. My current practice is informed by the human body, music, sound, poetry, literature, movement, life sciences, history, and psychology and neuroscience. A number of my White Series toyobo plate prints were inspired by Sylvia Plath’s poetry and specifically Lady Lazarus. This series explored the cultural and symbolic aspects of the colour white - sexuality, innocence, life, death, purity and transience - in relation to the female body and the poetry of Sylvia Plath. I used self representation to explore these themes and was particularly interested in the way that Plath used female personae to translate her emotions and experience. Many of the images from this series have been exhibited widely including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, London, Wrexham, Arles France and Malyasia. I was a finalist in an international photography competition - Photography Open Salon - based at the Galerie Huit France with “Breath of Life” which was one of the images from this series. “Breath of life” was also shown at Galerie Huit, Malaysia in 2012. My work is festered in a hardback book about the exhibition. Images from the White Series were featured in the 2011 Plath Profiles magazine published by Indiana University.

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http://www.iun.edu/~nwadmin/plath/vol4/index.shtml and currently feature in the Oriel International Print Show 2013 in Wales. I have received a number of awards and funding for a range of projects over the last couple of years including a knowledge transfer award from the University of Edinburgh to develop a project - Transformations: LIFE PORTRAITS (www.ccace.ed.ac.uk/transformations) for the Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology based on their healthy ageing research. I developed four videos on the themes of transience, and time and its passing through the older human body and used movement and music to express this idea. The videos were exhibited at the Great North Museum, Newcastle in Coming of Age: The Art and Science of Ageing. I recently received a Fife Council Visual arts award to develop artwork and a video - “Nine Thoughts- a riff on fragmentation and loss” - based on the themes of dementia, loss, emotions and the wonder of nature. The soundtrack includes spoken word pieces by myself and field recordings of the Burn of Sorrow and Burn of Care at Dollar glen in Scotland. Milton and Fall stories have also been an influence over recent years and I was awarded the Pauline Fay Lazarus Award for work based on the human body in 2012 for a lithograph - Dream of Venus which was based on the fall story. I’m currently working on images from a project called Culture Club about the Scottish Arts Club in Edinburgh where I was Artist in Residence during April 2013. Dorothy Alexander Biography Dorothy Alexander is a writer and teacher of Creative Writing based in the Scottish Borders. Widely published, she won the Macallan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Competition in 2002 and is currently working on a novel while experimenting with visual poetry.

Poem I covered myself in gauze, closed my eyes and lay still so that it looked as though I was dead. In the photograph I took, the white gauze softens the black of my hair, the dark red of my lips......is a blur that cartoons the outlines of my pale skin. But I wasn’t dead. I was naked and the cool gauze set off a tingling pulse, quickened my breath so that it was hard not to move. I heard birdsong and wanted it to be the nightingale and not the lark; I wanted a verb to twist your Eden, to dissolve Cupid in my mouth; I wanted your mind inside my kiss. Do you want a broken charm to cut a way into this sugared mask, this armour perdu? Might that be a cliché in paradise? with visual artists working in metal, craft bookbinding and text. I was a maiden and I wanted to play. I wanted to be a little bird, an Icarus girl, whose feathers cut the horizon and do not slither. But I feared colour as I feared flame; white on white brought me joy. The secrets of my heart’s razored strata were obscured by sleight of mouth so that the damage hung from wire attached to trick skin, and meaning became a shadow, a smudge of red. The Written Image. Statements from the Artists and the Poets

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Catherine Sargeant & Janette Ayachi Catherine Sargeant Artist Statement: ‘Angel of the Pier’ On meeting Janette, the poet I was paired with, I sensed an opportunity to create a playful piece, especially as my own work has been developing towards installations and hers had elements of the theatrical. We realised we had previously met in the RSA in 2012, when I was installing my SSA exhibition text piece around 3 floors of the lift shaft, at this time Janette was working there. This prompted many discussions, those of our experiences about being surrounded by great works of art, leading onto childhood holiday memories and experiences of family illness. At this point the seed of the viewer being part of the artwork was sown. I also wanted to play on the fact instant photographic prints are available to almost all with our access to smart phones and social media. The resulting piece ‘Angel of the Pier’ mixes kitsch seaside photo booths with angelic halos, using the poem to accentuate the wings. Since I am a text artist and printmaker, we decided I could print my own words on the back, but after various ideas I opted to bring it back to the most basic form of printmaking, that of the handprint. We hope you enjoy taking your own image within the ‘Angel of the Pier’.

The Angel of the Pier A world of white roses, sea-froth swallowing pebbles, pills dissolving on the tongue, as oily as fulmar. Cliffs more dangerous in the mariners moonlight, we shed our shamanic animal, disrobe for the waves. Chapel to coastline, stained glass to sun, we dip our heads for the portico star that rises from the mulatto halo of St. Kilda.

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Matthew Carey Simos & Rebecca Sharp Matthew Carey Simos & Rebecca Sharp Joint Statement: Fun Kong Comic strips and graphic novels have been a significant source of artistic inspiration for Matthew over the years. Rebecca shared this interest and was keen to explore a more literal, overtly visual form of storytelling, having worked on a number of more abstract collaborations in recent years. So the decision was made to create a graphic novel style linocut. Rebecca had the concept for the poem already in mind - the story came from a train journey from Liverpool (where she is currently based) to Glasgow, when she saw from the window a large gorilla figure in a scrapyard (exactly what she describes in the first stanza / frame). She saw the figure a few times on the same route over the course of about a year (though sadly it now seems to be gone), and started to imagine what his story might be. Seeing Matthew’s work, with its allusions to graphic novel form and an otherworldly aspect, Rebecca knew Fun Kong had found a home. The visual nature of the poem enabled Matthew to plan the layout of the panels and captions. In turn, Rebecca advised about text placement and layout to keep the rhyme/flow of the language uninterrupted, although she was keen to adapt the words to the visual form and not simply reproduce the poem layout within the print. Matthew chose a repetitive three-colour scheme and signature black outline, to aid the printing process and to allow for bold colour choices. The biggest consideration was with the printed text, as carving out small type on lino may have proved extremely tiresome and ineffective. Matthew also considered lead type set but chose to hand-write the text, then screen-print it over the complete linoprint. This collaboration has brought the story of Fun Kong to life and has led the artists to consider making a full graphic novel together. Matthew Carey Simos Biography Matthew Carey Simos was born in Welkom, South Africa in 1984. He grew up in Greece where he had the chance to explore a large part of the country as his father’s profession required the family to move around quite often. He graduated from Coventry University in 2007 with an Honours degree in Illustration. For the next two years, in rural Greece, he spent his time building traditional Greek musical instruments and drawing strange creatures. In 2010 he moved to Edinburgh and took up relief printmaking a year later. He is based in Edinburgh, currently works as an illustrator/printmaker and specialises in reduction lino printing. Rebecca Sharp Biography Rebecca Sharp is a writer from Glasgow, working in poetry, performance and prose, often in collaboration with other artists. Work includes The Ballad of Juniper Davy and Sonny Lumière (poems and score, book/CD and performance); Fathoming: setting poetry to silk (poems and silk objects, with artist Eva Fulinova); Little Forks / Forcan Beaga (prose, performance and book), touring in English and Gaelic; The Tiger Act (books by Roncadora/Hugh Bryden); Unmapped with painter Anna King, which exhibited at StAnza and the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; and Rules of the Moon, a new performance with sound artist Philip Jeck, first performed at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, touring in 2014. Rebecca is currently working on a new commission for Mr McFall’s Chamber ensemble - Remembered / Imagined, with composer Ailie Robertson, using the archive of the Department of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University.

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Susannah Stark & Anita Govan Susannah Stark Artist Statement My work is the result of a constant ongoing investigation into the process of image making, formed by the historical and conceptual legacies of the printmaking process: dependency on procedure and repetition; ties to literature and to craft; use as a tool for dissemination, both politically and commercially; the pedantic nature and the desire for endless multiplication. Through practice-led research I continue to investigate printmaking as a poetic tool; the rhythm of making and the materiality of print drawing the viewer into its deeper meaning. I am interested in the balance between spontaneity and premeditation and the slippages between the functional and the functionless with regard to the labour process involved with the production of prints. A struggle for control over the medium was the starting point for working collaboratively with Anita. She collated a list of ‘discontinued’ or lost words from English literature, language artefacts in themselves. We were interested the sounding of the words which could be worked together in new & unique combinations, to accrue new meanings. We starting saying them out loud to each to try and make sense of them. We also talked about a language ‘machine’ that would omit lost or obsolete words in new combinations. As we had only met in person a couple of times and much of our collaboration was done online the idea of a language machine that would break down and spit out strange visions and pieces of language begun to take on new relevance. Susannah Stark Biography Susannah Stark is an artist living and working in Glasgow, UK. She graduated from Grays School of Art in 2011 and has since exhibited locally and internationally including RSA New Contemporaries in Edinburgh and with the Siena Art Institute in Italy. She was the recipient of the 2011 RSA John Kinross Scholarship to Italy. She is currently a member of artist run organisation The Pipe Factory in Glasgow and has participated in various workshops, exhibitions and symposiums organised by the studio members, including a diverse programme of events for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 2012 and will be participating again in the programme for Glasgow International 2014. Most recently she has undertaken a practice-led research residency to Seacourt Print Studio in Northern Ireland. Anita Govan Biography Was appointed as Stirling Makar (poet Laureate) in 2012-2015. Described as a ‘driving force’ in many successful events, clubs and workshops for performance poetry in Scotland. She has a published collection Jane (Luath Press) and CD, Bare to the Bone, and was appointed Green Pencil Poet 2011. In 2012 she was commissioned by ConFAB to write a video poem Swimmers for the 2014 Commonwealth Games and has appeared on television and BBC Radio and performed internationally at New York’s Nuyorican and Bowery poets café. She is also one-part of duo UrBanter with U.S drummer/vocalist Paul Mills (Hue & Cry).

The Art of Kalotypography Vanmost vacivity murklins and then Tussicate tussicate tussicate Ipsographic ipsographic with assectation and impigrity this pregnatress primifluous cosmogyral sementine and starrify An Inky aquabib Page 66

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Lambition on radicarian and rimestock The patration of redamancy Ipsographic ipsographic Tussicate tussicate tussicate Excutient, times bajulate As slimkin stibogram The fabrefaction for Novaturient in auturgy an act of igniparouse and then These Gaudiloquent blateration Begin to Labasate Labasate Labasate And to Lugent Lugent Till Tussicate tussicate tussicate Kexy And in vacivity murklins a pregnatress sleep again.

The Art of Kalotypography The Art of Beautiful Printing Vanmost vacivity murklins Foremost emptiness in the dark and then and then Tussicate tussicate Cough cough Tussicate cough Ipsographic Self recording Ipsographic Self recording with assectation and impigrity with the act of following quickness this pregnatress primifluous female power that first flows cosmogyral sementine and starrify whirling round the universe sowing and make into stars An Inky aquabib An inky water drinker

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Lambition on radicarian and rimestock Lapping the roots of words and runic writings The patration of redamancy The perfection of loving in return Ipsographic ipsographic Self recording Self recording Tussicate tussicate Cough cough tussicate cough Excutient, times bajulate Shaking off times heavy burden As slimkin stibogram As small and slender graphic footprints The fabrefaction for Novaturient The making a work of art for alteration in auturgy an act of igniparouse in self action an act of bringing forth fire and then and then These Gaudiloquent blateration These joyful chattering Begin to Labasate Begin to slide Labasate Labasate slide slide And to Lugent And to weeping Lugent weeping Till till Tussicate tussicate cough cough tussicate cough Kexy withered And in vacivity murklins And in emptiness in the dark a pregnatress sleep again. A female power sleeps again

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Kelly Stewart & Tom Pow Kelly Stewart & Tom Pow Joint Statement We both wanted to do something fresh for this project, not just in content but in approach. We realised early on that the nature of the collaboration was different to any we had done before. This was not a case of a writer responding to a visual stimulus or of an artist illustrating a writerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. This was a two-pronged process during which two elements would create a third. Tom had never written a ghazal before, but he felt its non-narrative nature would lend itself to the collaborative process. The ghazal is composed of couplets, each of which is end-stopped and self-sufficient. It is argued that, within the ghazal, each couplet can be restrung as pearls are on a necklace. This flexibility would be to our advantage. At our first meeting, we discussed shared experiences and mutually agreed on creating a book for the project. Tom then wrote ten ghazals. Although he tried to be inclusive a great deal of the imagery came from his own image bank. So, at another meeting, we discussed further our understanding of the nature of the ghazal and of the ten that Tom had written. Image-wise we began to look at the work of Jim Dine and Monolo Millares, exploring black and white imagery with an emphasis on mark making. This led Kelly to explore monoprints as a way of translating the ghazals into imagery, and keeping to the black and white. She started off by collating various found images together which related somehow to the ghazals. Using these images as reference Kelly created over 16 hand painted oil based monoprints over two sessions. The results were really interesting. We then met to discuss the imagery and the format of the book. Kelly decided it would be best to take the monoprints into the screenprint process, so as to introduce the pink colour, as a symbol of the cherry blossom. The screenprint process also enabled Kelly to create page layouts to be made into three identical books and of course to incorporate the text. At this stage it was clear that there would have to be selection within the ten ghazals and this began a refining process which preferenced certain ghazals and then further isolated lines within ghazals. Eventually, we had stripped the elements of the project back to the lines which had primarily led to the images. The Cherry Blossom Ghazal is not a complete free-standing ghazal, but a ghazal integrated with its imagery â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it is the third thing we wished to create. This project most certainly posed challenges to which we worked to resolve together. A lot was learnt throughout the process, particularly that communication at every step is key to keeping the project true to both artist and poet.

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TEN GHAZALS by Tom Pow - GHAZAL 1 The beauty and the threat of two kites threading circles of air above fresh-cut corn. That whole afternoon, my hand silent on your shoulder; tears like seeds falling on the sunlit table. Milk drills into a pail. I shall smell of it always, as I smelled earth from the brush passing through my hair. There are certain bends in a road â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sails of sunlight and shadow â&#x20AC;&#x201C; that have no interest in being remembered. A flower from waste ground, pink and floppy as a handkerchief: I present it at each border I cross.

GHAZAL 2 Though I try as best I can to teach you, your inheritance will be a pattern you can never master more than a panther in a cathedral can find an altar where the candelabra burns as brightly as itself. When fire stormed everything but the bell tower, it stood over the ruins of the city like its one good eye. Somewhere there is a verb which means to loot yourself out of history; to turn your children into sand. Now gather round the rubble of these skirts. The heart of this story is, Everything that has a name exists.

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GHAZAL 3 The motif of the open window - redolent of the conversant breeze. Let it bring what it will. St. Jerome in the Syrian desert. He outstares each bleached skull. His lion beside him, a river of light. From forty years ago, a tajine like a wheel; lamb so tender, it separated from itself like leaves of Rizla. Kelly, I look out at a world built up, layer by layer; history not as narrative but as process. A raven placed in the high foreground. From it, all colours will flow. Even snow will have order, depth.

GHAZAL 4 Let me share my latest snapchat â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a fading image of a stringthing baby, its head ripe as a large fruit. Meanwhile my twitterfeed keeps me abreast of the death rates in Syria. It is one of many options. In Artesan Roast, we converse. The finest Spanish is spoken in Colombia. This will be of help to someone. Wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it in Bogota that steel shields once helped one negotiate the main avenida? In Festival City, I place my four limbs in tins and hammer through the streets let dawn take me down.

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GHAZAL 5 Yes-yes-yes-yes, the gulls cry into first light. I give each one a name till sleep takes me. If I could only find doh, I could follow that trail Palm Sunday, all the way to Greenside. Have you noticed there’s no telling whether beauty or ugliness has the deeper roots? My daughter’s goldfish leapt from its tank to die upon the carpet. Freedom is our element. I brush the seaweed from your damp chest. I place my ear on your scattering heartbeats.

GHAZAL 6 What is it that weighs on your shoulder, yet rarely weighs you down?* My favourite blue shirt on the line look how fullsomely it tells of the wind. Rather than a row at breakfast, discuss the teased out fibres of the clouds. Blue Bunny, horses, the white threads of the weir these three also my son gave me to love. Don’t fart higher than your arse a French proverb that never wears out. * a baby

GHAZAL 7 In the past two years, I’m told, the world’s data has grown by 90%. Don’t feel so bad about your attic. Books, papers, radios - all manner of machines: their souls grow thinner, ungraspable as our own. You’ve got to see the cherry blossom in May, she said. It eats loneliness. Then returns it as loss. When, his hand trembling, he handed the plate back, the eloquent rain had wiped it till it shone. The Inuit boy cuts the heads off toy animals; in their stead, grafting “the evil he feels within”.

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GHAZAL 8 Oar-sound in the calm of the island bay my ageing fingers, threading water, remembering. Out of town, the river curves slowly, deliciously. It has one thing on its mind – to share its silence. As a boy, I held many small animals in my hands mice, birds, lizards. They gave my life its gravity. Light, in its guise of liquidity or flight, passes over the soft green cobbles of the summer trees. Home is where we gather up the threads where, without thought or guile, we let the stories go.

GHAZAL 9 In the Laboratory of Tears, a familiar dispute how to provoke action while acting ethically. These birds? The size of thumbs, they fly before our car as if harnessed to a fairytale. Would you believe it? “The interior of this superbly appointed house has wall-to-wall WOW factor.” Restless sky. Trees tethered. I watch the birds, brushed with light, parody their swaying desire. What more can be said? “In the long run, we are all dead and none of us is Proust.”

GHAZAL 10 Can you not do better than to fill emptiness with anxiety? Even if it’s simply to face a flower head on. Give thought to these food, water and want. For someone, this light is the last light. Stand up, turnaround, leave the room.

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Notes: Ghazal 2 – “Everything that has a name exists” is a Basque proverb. Ghazal 3 - “The motif of the open window” is the title of a paper at a recent academic conference [need to check further] Ghazal 6 - Don’t fart higher than your arse – 18th century French peasant proverb. Ghazal 9 - “The interior of this superbly appointed house has wall-to-wall WOW factor. The vast open plan...” from Unique Cottages, Carefully Selected Scottish Homes in Beautiful Locations (2013). “In the long run, we are all dead and none of us is Proust.” Anne Enright writing in a symposium on Failure (The Guardian 22.06.13) Tom Pow

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Miriam Vickers & Anita John Miriam Vickers & Anita John Joint Statement Owls of Charolles is a copperplate etching based on the poem of the same name from the book Child’s Eye by Anita John. It combines the techniques of hard ground, soft ground, aquatint and burnishing. Both the artist and poet traditionally work from nature, capturing landscape and wildlife in words and images. During the collaboration, the emphasis moved from initial impressions of the poem to a focus on the owl as symbol. In committing images of owls to print and words, we aimed to recreate what was, essentially an intangible, fleeting encounter with these birds of dawn and dusk. The hee-er sound in the poem is attributed to the Short-eared Owl (le hibou des marais in French). This nomadic owl is known to roam in search of food and, although its preferred habitat in the UK is moorland, it can be found wherever there are voles and other small mammals, hunting over moors, marshes and water meadows. The images in the print are those of Short-eared Owls. And so began the hunt to observe live owls in action! Our research took us to the Scottish Owl Centre at Polkemmet Country Park, home to each of the native British owls – except for the Shorteared Owl! The Centre holds daily flying demonstrations, so we were able to observe other owls in flight. Even so, it was difficult to capture these magnificent predators when their wings are fully opened for just a few seconds: barely enough time to allow a few lines to be sketched on paper, a few words to be jotted down. Our research also took us to internet footage of Short-eared Owls in the wild, quartering fields in the hunt for food; and to the fabulous range of noises made by owls in general, from bee-like buzzing and insect-like rasping to the more traditional, well-know hoot of the Tawny owl. No research on owls could be complete without observing the images of Britain’s most famous owl photographer, Eric Hosking, who captured the first images of owls in the 1930’s. He is best known for his photograph, Barn Owl in Heraldic Pose, and also to the fact that he lost his left eye to a Tawny Owl who attacked in defence of her young while he was preparing to photograph her nest. Inspiration too came from the work of the wildlife artist, Darren Woodhead, who has captured images of Short-eared Owls wintering at Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh and around Musselburgh. His book, From Dawn till Dusk, is to be recommended. For both the artist and the poet, collaboration as part of the Written Image has been a journey of discovery, inspiring new prints and poems about the Short-eared Owl and owls in general. We’ve had much fun along the way! Anita John Biography Anita John writes poetry and short fiction and her work is widely published on-line, in anthologies and literary magazines including Mslexia, Gutter and Northwords Now. Child’s Eye, her debut collection of prize-winning stories and poems was published by Biscuit Publishing in 2013 and explores love and loss in family relationships. In 2012 she won the Biscuit International Short Fiction competition and was one of five poets to be selected for the HappenStance/Writers’ Forum poetry mentoring scheme. Many of her poems have been placed in poetry competitions including commendations in the Wigtown Poetry Competition, judged by Robert Crawford, and the Plough Poetry Prize, judged by Andrew Motion. Inter-generational relationships at the point of change are a constant theme in Anita’s work. She also likes to explore the way in which landscape, the changing seasons and wildlife reflect and throw light on the human condition. The poem, The Owls of Charolles, (extracts from which are included in this exhibition) falls into this category. Anita tutors creative writing for Edinburgh University’s Lifelong Learning Department, creating and delivering poetry and short fiction writing courses on an annual basis. She is also the Convenor of Pentland Writers and belongs to the poetry group, The Poetry of Seven. More of her work can be found here: http://www.westlinton.org.uk/writers Page 76

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The Owls of Charolles A shadow of pale wings lands on the latticed fence by the poubelle just as chance would have us alight in Charolles as evening falls. In the half-light they stir the silence, pale silhouettes close by as we pitch tent beneath the ash and willow, alongside the pond where in starlight frogs will blow and bellow. The coffee percolator purrs and through the close night-air these other-worldly cries carry across field and fence to tell us we are hee-er, hee-er, hee-er, our journeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end, as much chosen as if we ourselves had made the choice. Anita John

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Susan Wilson & Colin Herd Susan Wilson Artist Statement The collaboration with Colin Herd for the project ‘The Written Image’ began with Colin’s expressed interest in etching and his enthusiasm for the work of the 18th century landscape painter Alexander Cozens. I responded immediately to Cozens’ etchings of clouds which he described according to their visual appearance, ignoring any meteorological references, and annotating them in a form I have used in a series of etchings on unusual leaves, describing a leaf by its character rather than by its botanical identification. Alexander Cozens also produced analytical and yet oddly rough and ready drawings of landscapes of different historical periods and developed a method of teaching in which he encouraged his students to make blots as an initial stage in creating compositions. His treatise entitled ‘A New Method for Assisting the Invention in the Composition of Landscape’ was published in 1785. The collaboration with Colin became focused on the notion of blots, their characteristics, their function, their variety, the possibility of complexity. The poem ‘blots’, in its original form, was gradually reduced in length through exchanges of emails and ideas, to produce a working narrative moving from the abstract to the possible to the surreal . At an early stage we decided that an Artist’s Book would be the best format to illustrate the final version of the poem. The challenge was to find a method of producing blots which were arbitrary yet could reflect the content of each stanza. I did not want a series of simplistic blots as if the result of a leaky pen. After a series of failed attempts, I began working with oily lithographic tusche and water-based Indian ink. Mixed together on tracing paper, I would watch as the two antipathetic substances dispersed and coalesced, accepting the final and serendipitous form. I like to think that this method in part followed Alexander Cozens’ teaching methods and emulated his practice of “casual blots and flourishes”, a “blottesque” system of working. The resulting blots were paired with each stanza as appropriate. Having chosen a suitable font for the language, I made up the pages combining and integrating stanza and image. The blot that is the planet references the book ‘Reading Red’, a collaboration between the artist Richard Tuttle and poet Charles Bernstein who is the subject of Colin’s PhD. The pages were screenprinted on to Fabriano Ingres, a paper which Cozens often used for his drawings and which afforded a certain transparency so that each page is blotted out by the previous one. The hand bound book, using a Japanese four-hole binding, is fitted into a cover made with a heavy weight Ingres, with Crystal Parchemarque end papers. The book has been produced in a limited edition of 10, with an Artist’s proof and display copy consigned to Edinburgh Printmakers for the exhibition ‘The Written Image’.

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Susan Wilson Biography Susan was born in Dalry, Galloway. She studied Fine Art at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Painting and Printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art and graduated with an M.Litt in 1980 from Edinburgh University. Other studies include the History of Book Production at Glasgow University and Bookbinding at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee. Since graduation, she has worked mainly in etching, continuing her interest in landscape, its surface patterns, its relics. However a residency in Gardenstown, near Banff, inspired a return to painting, exploring the geology and the local fossil fish beds. Recent etchings demonstrate her interest in plant life, its oddities and demise, and plant fossils. Current projects examine found objects that are specific to a site and describe an imaginary evolution or recent, local, history. The collaboration with Colin Herd for The Written Image, is her second such project, the first working with the writer Bill Duncan to produce The Hirta Portfolio, for which she made etchings as a visual equivalent to Billâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poems about the history and culture of St Kilda and the loss subsequent to the evacuation in 1930. The limited edition of 36 - each one named for one of the islanders - was produced in collaboration with Dundee Contemporary Arts Print Studio which holds the remaining edition. The folio has been exhibited in Scotland and abroad and is to be found in the collections of the Scottish Parliament and the National Library of Scotland.

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