April! A very big poetry-month sale at Stanza Press

UPDATE 4/5: So sorry, I think we may already be sold out of the second printing! There are a few copies left at online sellers but not at sale price.  UPDATE 4/20: I understand that the above may be wrong, and that there are 60 copies remaining, but the site still says out of print. They've promised to look into the situation... More when I know! The Foliate Head, a hardcover poetry collection normally selling for £15.00, is on sale for a paltry £4.00; some of the other books are on sale at Stanza for a mere £2.00, including Matt Bialer's Tell Them What I Saw and Jo Fletcher's anthology, Off the Coastal Path. See the whole sale list here.

The Foliate Head is a gorgeous-looking little book with profuse green man art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and design by Andrew Wakelin. I'll add some poems below so you may judge whether it is also good in other ways; there are a few on the page for the book as well. 

Thank you to publisher Pete Crowther for asking for a book, and for allowing the threesome of me and Clive and Andrew to have our way with it! I'm very glad that it went into a second printing.


"Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote, / And bathed every veyne in swich licour, / Of which vertu engendred is the flour," then we simply must have a poetry-month sale. (Thank you, Geoffrey Chaucer and Pete, again.)

PUCK IN SPRING

Now the catamount will scream,

Now the bears awake from dream

That the winter’s night prolongs

Till the ice dissolves in songs.

Now the daybreak fires the mist

By the mountain ridges kissed.

While the crocus blossoms yield,

Opening along the field.

Now it is the hour in spring

When the jetting sap will bring

Fresh desire to boy and girl

Waking to a brighter world.

And the fairies hunting shade,

Finding meadow grass arrayed

With the bloom of early bells,

Creep inside the fragrant cells.

Now in clearing, vale, and slope,

All the land is drunk with hope—

In the ancient greening weald,

Now is loosed what once was sealed.

Why, the very mountains reel

At the turning of the wheel.

“I Heard Their Wings Like the Sound of Many Waters” 

In the dark, in the deeps of the night that are
Crevasses of a sea, I heard their wings.
I heard the trickling of tiny feathers
With their hairs out like milkweed parachutes
Floating idly on the summer air,
I heard the curl and splash, the thunderbolts
Of pinions, the rapids and rattle of shafts—
Heard Niagara sweep the barreled woman
And shove her under water for three days,
I heard a jar of fragrance spill its waves
As a lone figure poured out all she could,
Heard the sky’s bronze-colored raindrops scatter
On corrugated roofs and tops of wells,
I heard the water-devil whirligigs,
I heard an awesome silence when the wings
Held still, upright as flowers in a vase,
And when I turned to see why they had stilled,
Then what I saw was likenesses to star
Imprisoned in a form of marble flesh,
With a face like lightning-fires and aura
Trembling like a rainbow on the shoulders,
But all the else I saw was unlikeness
That bent me like a bow until my brow
Was pressed against the minerals of earth,
And when I gasped at air, I tasted gold.

THE MAGNOLIA GIRL

She climbed the great magnolia tree

To learn the ways of bird and bee,

And there the Prince of Darkness came

To tempt her with delicious shame.

He bore her up and bore her down,

He let her try his royal crown

While leaves went clattering-a-clack

Like gossips warning at her back.

A burst of starlight from his face,

His every move a sigh of grace—

Could you resist his lightsome wiles,

Or stop the arrows of his smiles?

What was a tendency to hiss

When set beside a glowing kiss?

In long-ago and far-away,

She danced her dance the livelong day—

She showed him all her naked skin,

And what they did was mortal sin.

When boredom dulled his passion’s rage,

The Serpent Prince desired a cage;

He jailed her in the blooming tree

And spread a lie that she was free.

Addicted to the streaming light

From which her lover once took flight,

She now repents those leisure hours

Misspent among magnolia flowers. 

You asked, no. 2: writer, artist, designer

Clive Hicks-Jenkins: When time allowed and opportunities came my way, I began to make book cover images for some of my friends, the chief among them being Marly Youmans, who because of her reputation as a writer was able to persuade one of her publishers to employ me. For The Foliate Head she even persuaded the publisher to take on my brother-in-law, Andrew Wakelin, as the designer, and he produced a splendid book-cover and ensured the layout inside was handsome. It was The Foliate Head that also established my regular practice of making page-division images and vignettes for Marly’s books.

Sienna Latham asked how Clive and I work with a designer. Perhaps there's no one answer to that, as to so many things! But now I'll try to think my way through and find out, right now.

What is always the same is our relationship. The two of us trust each other to do good work, and we don't interfere--I don't try and make the artist draw a certain element or in a particular mode, that is, and he doesn't try to encourage me to write other than I do. We never try to hurry each other in any way. We are curious about what the other is doing. Although we are very different, we have common loves, a kinship in sensibility, and are drawn to some of the same material, something we discovered early in writing letters back and forth.

As there are some books that have only a jacket (and cover) from Clive, I'll speak to those that are also decorated by him on the interior. We have worked with three designers on interior / exterior art, and I would say that it's a great help to have a designer care about the material. Our three designers are Andrew Wakelin (The Foliate Head), Elizabeth Adams (Thaliad), and Mary-Frances Glover Burt (Glimmerglass and Maze of Blood.) Perhaps it is surprising that each of the three people involved with making the book--writing, art, and design--is so free to do what he or she likes. Certainly I've been in situations where I've had little knowledge of what was happening with a jacket/cover. I've also been privy to the sight of publishers (not mine) and writers (not me) attempting to budge Clive, though why one would do so, I cannot imagine. Gratefulness that he wants to do a piece of work for a book of mine is always my slant on things.

The main hurdle with books with a good deal of art is getting publishers to agree with what we will do. The great advantage with heading toward small and university presses is that people can be willing to agree or compromise. (The down side tends to be less visibility, less "push" for books, of course, as there is less muscle behind a launch.)

Andrew Wakelin, the brother of Clive's partner, was an interesting choice as a designer, in that it was possible for Clive and Andrew to meet in person to discuss layout, and for Peter Wakelin to render opinions as well. Clive and I have a love for foliate heads, and the images arrived with that sense of ease that comes from love and long practice. I had little to do but admire, although we certainly discussed choice and placement. As I had met Andrew while in Wales, I found it easy to imagine their meetings at Ty Isaf when reported by email. The primary challenge with having Andrew serve as designer is that he is not an employee of Stanza Press (a division of P. S. Publishing in the U.K.), and so we had to get permission to use a different designer and also to tinker with the Stanza Press template for poetry books. (Val/Orson, which has jacket art from Clive, was outsourced by P. S. to writer / designer Robert Wexler, so we knew it was possible. Interestingly, I got to stay with Robert and his wife, Rebecca Kuder, when I taught in the Antioch summer workshops.) It helped that Pete Crowther asked for a poetry book, since when people ask, they're more likely to accept some variation (though Pete is a wonderfully nice and agreeable man.) It also helped that Andrew is a grand designer. We had an unexpected bit of difficulty with pagination and length because of the template, and at the last moment added a few poems that were congenial with the manuscript.

Designer-and-more Beth Adams is someone I met long before she asked for Thaliad (Ivy Alvarez and I had edited an issue of quarrtisiluni, the magazine she founded with Dave Bonta, and I live not far from Beth's childhood home.) She is a visual artist, writer, editor / designer, and publisher. Her Phoenicia Publishing (Montreal) is a micro-press in staff and a macro-press in ambition. As a team, we had many common interests and were united in the desire to make the most beautiful book possible, given the constraints of small press. (Constraints are often good challenges that lead to ingenuity.) The three of us kept in close touch. Our emails were full of forwarded quotes from one another and the many images Clive made, all influenced by American folk art.

One marvelous aspect to Phoenicia Publishing is that Beth's hand is in everything. Because she writes and makes art and designs, there's a seamlessness and feeling of a central editorial taste about all Phoenicia's books.

Mary-Frances Glover Burt, who designs for Mercer University Press (her company is Burt and Burt), had a great many images to work with for Glimmerglass, as Beth Adams did for Thaliad and Andrew Wakelin for The Foliate Head. Because the press stands as an intermediary between artist and its chosen designer, one would think that we might feel a little more detached from Mary-Frances. But it's a new world now, and we're all hooked together by social media. We're big fans of Mary-Frances. Here's Clive on her imaginative jacket design:

Clive: By contrast [with The Throne of Psyche, which used existing art] I made the artwork for Glimmerglass specifically for the project, and I’ve greatly enjoyed working with Mary-Frances Glover Burt as she’s sensitively transferred my drawing to the cover and made clever adjustments to finesse it into what you see at the top of this page. (I shall not spoil the illusion by indicating where adjustments have taken place, but suffice to say that she’s been quite the magician!) Moreover she’s made the wrap-around truly beautiful, with the lettering for the cover cleverly reconfigured for the spine, and the foliate elements unspooling onto the flaps. I particularly like the detailing of where she’s inserted a white rectangle for the necessary barcode on the back cover, but sweetened it by having a foliate element passing in front of a corner of it. Gorgeous work, Mary-Frances.

We felt confident about each person's part in the process--Clive and I had already seen what an elegant job Mary-Frances did with The Throne of Psyche, which won an Abby design award for Burt and Burt and Mercer--and we looked forward to seeing what she would do. (Clive's description of what she has accomplished is so appealing, and I also liked the tiny minotaur on the spine, hooked onto the lettering Clive mentions.)

Perhaps it's in Maze of Blood where one sees most vividly how very imaginative a designer can be. In some ways, Mary-Frances appeared to have less to work with and more of a challenge when Clive's many small decorations for the interior of Glimmerglass gave way to something larger. with Maze of Blood. Despite being busy with other projects, Clive made six portraits for division pages, plus the head on the jacket.

Clive: The drawings, which are variously embellished versions of a man’s head, are intended as poetic expressions of the text rather than as representing specific episodes. Because I had only six images to play with, I tried to densely layer my ideas, so any one drawing might be seen to be referencing multiple aspects of the narrative. Vegetation and flowers figure strongly in Marly’s text, as do the imaginative universes the protagonist conjures in his novels and short stories. I wanted to combine both in this image, and so while the ‘flowering’ has been informed by aspects of American folk-art… particularly appliqué-quilts… by setting it like the crest of a headdress, it can simultaneously echo of some of the writer’s elaborate inventions of ancient and mythic cultures. In each image the man’s eye has been replaced by a substitute. There’s been a beetle, a flower, the sighting of a revolver and a coiled ribbon of paper. Here a ‘folk-art’ bird is the stand-in, and I like that the plumes of its tail might be seen as ‘tears of blood’.

At one point, Mary-Frances requested a sketch of folded paper like the maze in one of the heads, and she used it on the title page. Other elements were plucked from the six portraits--a bird, a gun, insects, flower--and woven into the text pages, as well as appearing like a passage into the prefatory and out the concluding pages. The jacket flaps and rear of the jacket also show how she has re-used signal elements like the passion flowers and moth and gun, all dark and shadowy in the rich blue of the background. The foliate bar code detail that Clive liked on Glimmerglass? There's a moth that has settled onto, slightly into, the bar code of Maze of Blood.

What strikes me about all these triangular relationships is that they are founded on a trust in the abilities and creativity of other artists. In all cases, the people involved respected the abilities of the others and left them in freedom. While it always seemed that a good deal of collaboration was happening because I was constantly seeing fresh images, in truth we were simply immersed in one another's work and having the great and happy pleasure of watching how one art generates another. Seeing the energies of the initial work flow elsewhere and generate new work is marvelous. When this sort of collaboration goes well, each person is a part of a dynamic, moving whole--as, say, one spiral branch of a triskelion.

p. s. In answer to another question, the hardcover of Thaliad is only available via the Phoenicia site. The paperback can be ordered via the usual places.

p. p. s. If you want to see Clive's lovely response and some also-lovely comments, go here. And Alan Lee has ordered three of our books! My fantasy-loving, writing-and-cartooning child was as excited as when a Diana Wynne Jones blurb arrived for Ingledove.

p. p. p. s. All the above is an attempt to describe something that is simple, full of love and joy and magic.

Catherwood update / in-print books

Small vignette for Glimmerglass
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Catherwood

After the Entertainment Weekly tip-of-the-hat to "heartstopping" Catherwood, used book dealers sold a good many copies of the book--this, of course, was both lovely and a little frustrating, as I have in-print books that need homes and am planning on a new edition of Catherwood. I've decided to turn down (with many thanks, and after too much dithering on my part) some offers from publishers to reprint, and to experiment with doing the reprint myself in my so-far-imaginary free time. Despite the usual too-crammed schedule, I am aiming to have the book out in paper and ebook within a year.

And my books now in print--

See tabs above for reviews and other information on A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (novel, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award and a Silver Award, ForeWord BOTYA), Thaliad ("exciting and heartbreaking myth of origin"), The Foliate Head, and The Throne of Psyche. The first two were both on the end-of-year 2012 Favorites at Books & Culture. The last two are poetry collections, and I'll let this quote recommend my work in that line:

Youmans is a traditionalist in her use of forms, and her work will delight those who enjoy classical poetry with direction and structure, yet her strong and inventive metaphors and similes evoke an otherness that only Coleridge attained....wholly beautiful and brilliant. Youmans is a writer of rare ability whose works will one day be studied by serious students of poetry. Greg Langley, The Baton Rouge Advocate

All four of these books were lucky to have exceptional designers--Burt and Burt of Macon, Georgia (who won an Addy for The Throne of Psyche), Elizabeth Adams in Montreal, and Andrew Wakelin in the UK--and several have beautiful art both within and without by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

Box of gratitudes no. 2: the designers

End-of-the-year thanks:

• To the design team of Burt and Burt (new parents Mary-Frances Glover Burt and Jim Burt) for the immaculate design on A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (Mercer University Press - The Ferrol Sams Award), which had such high production values that for the first time a just-published book of mine passed muster with my librarian mother (that means she thought it better made than books I've done with houses like Farrar, Straus & Giroux and David R. Godine;
• To the generous Andrew Wakelin for working with artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins (and sometimes me) on the design for The Foliate Head and creating an exceptional book. All the design work was done outside of normal Stanza Press (UK) staff; while we had to rely on the base template for the poetry series, The Foliate Head is very much its own self. Thank you, Andrew, for giving your time, and to Pete Crowther for giving us that freedom.
• To publisher Elizabeth Adams of Phoenicia Publishing (a small press based in Montreal), who did a marvelous job of balancing Hicks-Jenkins artwork with a long-poem text in sections for Thaliad. The decisions regarding placement of text, titles, or image on the page are thought-out and well-judged. An accomplished artist, writer, and designer, Beth wears a great many hats well in her work for Phoenicia. Thank you, Ms. Wonderful Hatter! All three books this year were exceptional in production.
• And while we're on the subject of design and books that took up my time this year, what a wonderful choice of artist in Alexander Jansson for William Alexander's Goblin Secrets, winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. I enjoyed being on the judging panel and think we found a lovely book in all ways.

Realio & trulio O-U-T

The news has gone out on facebook and Twitter and elsewhere, so perhaps not many will be surprised: rumor had it this morning that The Foliate Head had been returned (again) from the printers--this time we hope it is perfect. And then Clive wrote me that at least one pre-order in the UK had been received. So we are hoping to receive our copies soon.

Limited edition.

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Book design by Andrew Wakelin. Some suggestions from Peter Wakelin as well! And poems by me.

Feels so strange to have a tenth book. And Thaliad next.

Page for "The Foliate Head"

Tada! Here's a page for  The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012.) The poetry collection, out this month, is a limited edition of 300. If you want a copy, I recommend that you get it soon. I know it's available directly through Stanza Press and also through various Amazon sites, and of course one can always order through your favorite indie bookstore.

It is a special thing--a remarkably handsome item with grand design by Andrew Wakelin, artwork by the artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and poems by me. A rare thing, this, the book created by friends! I look forward to seeing a box of copies at my door.

If you have any suggestions or comments, there's a box at the foot of the book page with no pesky word verification or other hoops to jump.

Other recent or recently updated links of note:
A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage
Chapter one at Scribd
Hour-long interview with Bill Jaker of WSKG-Binghamton + article
The Throne of Psyche

Pre-orders--

Pre-orders are now available
from Stanza Press in the U.K.
Interior/exterior art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Design by Andrew Wakelin.

Poetry Monday

Here I am at Empire Toyota in Oneonta, looking at the final .pdf version of The Foliate Head, a beautiful thing with illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins--the loveliest testament to this friendship so far--and immaculately designed by Andrew Wakelin.  Clive and I cannot thank Andrew enough for the time lavished on this project, forthcoming from Stanza Press in the U.K.

And after that I must write my talk for Friday, when I'm chairing a panel on poets who write in other genres for the West Chester Poetry Conference. The introduction and poet-introductions are done, and I know what I want to say--just hoping life gives me a little space today!

Last night was a grand break, a lovely party with artists and writers and doctors and reverend doctors...

Cover, "The Foliate Head"

The Foliate Head, with a wealth of images by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
and marvelous design work by Andrew Wakelin.
Forthcoming from Stanza Press in the UK.

Foliate / Death

1.  GREEN MAN DREAMING

Probably I shouldn't bother to post today because Clive Hicks-Jenkins has put such a long, interesting recollection of our first acquaintance in the comments of the last post that it is bound to be more appealing than whatever I could possibly write! Clive and Andrew Wakelin are currently in cahoots on the interior and cover designs for The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press), and I can say is that it is going to be astonishingly beautiful. I've seen a version of both, but they are still tweaking, and the book of poetry and with its green man illustrations grows more marvelous by the instant. It has a color head on front and back with many black-and-whites inside. Lovely, lovely, and yet again lovely! 

2.  A TASTE FROM A DEATH AT THE WHITE CAMELLIA ORPHANAGE

Roiphe has driven a car for the first time with Pip as passenger; Roiphe's mother, Lil, is standing out in the Georgia dirt yard, unfastening the pin curls set around her head. Alden, Roiphe's younger brother (or younger bother) is close by.

“Mommer, would you go comb your hair?  You look like a medusa.”  Roiphe climbed out of the car, staggering a little as if the ground were a foreign medium.

            Her fingers moved nimbly around her head, collecting the crooked pins into a small dark sheaf, which she bound with a rubber band and dropped into her apron pocket.  “You could have been killed, the pair of you, or landed in the county jail with a pack of misfits.  Roiphe Tattnal, you don’t know the least thing about driving, no more than a fresh-laid egg.”

            “He does now.  The boy proved himself a driver of ingenuity and downright verve.”  Pip clambered from the passenger seat and leaned for support against the side of the auto.  He was not sure he could walk away yet, having recently been startled by a close call with a straggle of cows in the lane. 

“Lil, that was a dadgum shattering experience, but I believe—I truly believe that he could have done a powerful sight more if he had put his unthrottled genius into the thing.  If he survives, Roiphe Tattnal has some kind of a future in transportation.”  With a wrench, Pip yanked a bushel basket off a headlamp and surveyed it.

            “First man on the moon,” Alden crowed.

            “First idiot on the moon, more like.  Y'all better pluck those chicken feathers off the front before Mr. Louis sees it,” Lil advised.  “That’s all I’ve got to say.”

            “Would that it were.”  Roiphe rolled his eyes dramatically.  “All,” he added in case she had not understood.

            “I got your drift, bud.”  She started combing her hair out with her fingers. 

            “Pip wants to ride out to the cemetery,” Roiphe announced.

            Lil gave her brother a quick glance, half screened by hair, and then turned back.

            “Is that so,” she said, no hint of a question in her words.

3.  LINKS AND GIVEAWAY

Please don't forget that the Goodreads giveaway of 24 copies of the novel ends on the 15th, so sign up!

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage

Read chapter one at Scribd 

See the book page

See the new facebook page

Goodreads giveaway, April 15-May 15

Amazon hardcover and ebook

Indie bookstore search

Buy direct from Mercer

Celtic, Celtic--

Here's a peep at a division page for The Foliate Head from the Artlog of Clive Hicks-Jenkins; if you jump there, you may view Andrew Wakelin at work on the design for the book in the very room where I stayed when I traveled to Wales a year ago and enjoyed long wonderful days at Ty Isaf, reveling in Clive's beautifully-arranged world and all the festivities for his 60th birthday retrospective at Gregynog Gallery of The National Library of Wales. How the wind whistled up the stairs when the doors were flung open, all the way to Clive's studio at the top! If you take a look at Andrew, you'll see the enormous curtainless windows that woke me to the morning and green views of the garden and hills.

I'm looking forward to the promised view today. Everything Andrew and Clive touch in the way of books grows beautiful.

Last night I attended the Otschodela Council of Boy Scouts "Silver Beaver" award banquet in Oneonta--doesn't that sound strange?--as my husband is a scoutmaster and has been involved with scouting a long time. It turned out to be oddly touching. I always find events like annual dance recitals or crossing-over ceremonies or rural graduations to tug at the heartstrings because it is so lovely to live for a long time in one place and see children growing up and turning into young women and men. But this sort of ceremony, where you see aging men (silver at the crown, with tummies snug in Scouting regalia!) and a good number of women rewarded for many decades of work with children, can also have its moments of surprise and unexpected feeling.

More, the featured entertainment was Celtic and a great surprise: someone I knew as a young teen played a marvelous pipes concert. A few years ago, the Scotia-Glenville bagpipe band (of which Robby Schafsteck and his brother were then teen members) won third place in the Hazelhead Shield Novice Juvenile Pipe Band Championship at the world bagpipe championships in Glasgow--evidently the first time for the award to leave Scotland. Now he is a handsome young man with a proper kilt, bear-fur sporran, and hose-and-gillies!

Leaves of the Head

Clive Hicks-Jenkins has moved on from the eight final images for the cover of The Foliate Head, though you may still vote  on your favorite one (or two) if you like.  Now he has bent his own leafy mind to interior green men, or "green men in black and white."

And we have now been given absolute freedom in almost every way to frolic with the book design. Pete Crowther, publisher of Stanza Press (UK), has given us his blessing to do whatever we like save change the dimensions of the book! So this means much pleasure for author, artist, and designer...

Andrew Wakelin designed the two books in Clive's honor which came out at the time of the retrospective show last year, and they are both beautiful--the gorgeous art book from Lund Humphries that accompanied the exhibition, Clive Hicks-Jenkins; and The Book of Ystwyth: Six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins from Gray Mare and Carolina Wren. Andrew will also be in charge here. Andrew, Clive, and I are the conspirators who will have our say, and that will be great fun.

Clive and the foliate head!

FINAL UPDATE (I think!):  Clive has gathered together the cover finalists.
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/marlys-book-cover/
"marly's book and henry's window"

* * *

Note for people interested in how the pictures go with the text:

John Coulthart (who definitely ought to have a cover opinion!) mentioned not knowing the text as an issue. If anybody wants a peek / preview, the easiest way is to go to “Mezzo Cammin,” where I have evidently published more poems than any other contributor (because I like the publication and the editor.)

Here are some links to some poems in the book from that site:

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2009&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans This one includes the poem called “The Foliate Head.” The second poem is also in the book.

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2008&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans The first, second, and fifth poems are in the book and, I think, all in the foliate portion. The second poem is dedicated to Clive because he once played Puck (of course!) It won’t be listed that way in the book because the book itself is dedicated to him. (This is a very Clivean project, so I think it the right one to have his name on the dedication page…)

http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2009&iss=1&cat=poetry&page=youmans All of these are in the book, though not in the foliate section. But they are quite harmonious with the greener poems.

UPDATE:  A new link has been added to the list! See below.
MORE UPDATERY:  A fifth link! Got an opinion? Voice it!

Want to see the cover work in progress for The Foliate Head, my poetry book coming out from Stanza Press (UK)? Clive Hicks-Jenkins is working on the cover, and you may look at preliminary drawings here and here. Let me know what you like best!

"marly youmans and the foliate head"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/
A wealth of initial ideas.

"marly youmans and the foliate head: part 2"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/
More leafy green man heads, including a tattooed head!

"marly youmans and the foliate head: part 3"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/
Color...

"marly and the foliate head: part 4"
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/marly-and-the-foliate-head-part-4/
Tattoo!

"marly and the foliate head: part 5:
http://clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/marly-and-the-foliate-head-part-5/
Three new heads, in color: Clive says he will repost tomorrow, as these were taken with electric light and have a bit of reflection and perhaps inaccuracy of color. But I think you can see them pretty well!

I had a great time rummaging through books on green men while I was staying in Wales, so this feels like a coming-full-circle moment. Clive is doing cover and division pages, and Andrew Wakelin is grand ruler of design. No doubt Peter Wakelin will be unable to restrain himself from an opinion or two as well. Fun! I just wish I could sit down with them all in person once again, under the shadow of the hedge by Ty Isaf...

Collaborations with artists, 2012

A foliate head by Clive Hicks-Jenkins...

With painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins and designer Andrew Wakelin of Wales:

Clive is giving me three foliate heads for division pages and painting a head for the cover of The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press), and Andrew will be working with us on book design.

With painter Graham Ward of England:

I'm writing poems for Graham's opening in June--and having lots of fun doing so and getting first peek at his new paintings.

With the English-born transplant to Ohio, composer-and-much-more Paul Digby, and his wife, painter Lynn Digby:

We'll be doing what appears to be a fairly ambitious collaborative project, but right now it's barely getting started. More on that one later. This one is a sort of outgrowth of Paul's curation, music composition, and paintings joined with work by Lynn Digby and four other painters in "Into the Light" at Anderson Creative (November, 2011)--at least, doing such a large collaborative project seems to have fired the desire to do another.

Also with Paul Digby:
Paul is going to be matching more of my poems with music and film. Five are already up at youtube.  Rather saintly of him, I think!

Leaves in our hair--

I'm afraid that life has been a bit too busy lately. But I have been moving forward despite the dragons and rocks and pits in the path. One maiden has been rescued, a new chariot acquired post-Irene, and much late-night oil burned.  I turned in the page proofs of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage. I read Thaliad entirely too many times and then finally tossed in the final version, my fingers crossed that I did not introduce any errors accidentally into the text (start thinking that way and then the number of reads becomes infinite!) Next I wrote a review of Bei Dao's selected poems, even though I know no Chinese--a great handicap, I am afraid--and sent that off yesterday.

And now I doing a  last polish on The Foliate Head so that I can give the final version to Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Andrew Wakelin. Andrew designed Clive's two smashingly beautiful books for his 60th birthday retrospective at The National Library of Wales, Clive Hicks-Jenkins and The Book of Ystwyth: Six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and now he is going to work with us out of the considerable goodness of his heart, using the Stanza Press template. So we are doing our own thing instead of relying on the press entirely. And that will be quite interesting and fruitful, I think. We do need to make it "look" like a Stanza Press book, but we can do our own version. I'm very glad that Pete Crowther asked me for a poetry manuscript, and that he and designer Mike Smith are letting us fool around with the book. Frolics ahead!

The division pages of foliate heads are already done (if you attended Clive's retrospective at The National Library of Wales, you may remember them.) Clive will also do a cover image. It will be a hardcover book with the image printed directly on smooth boards. Although Stanza is not an "artists' books" press, I think it will be a highly collectible item as well as beautiful.

The poems have all appeared somewhere or other, a great many of them by request--I like being asked, as I am lazy in the area of submission. Energetic elsewhere, but lazy there. I find it rather like laundry. You wash, you dry, you fold... Enough! It's done. Who feels like putting the stacks away?

The book is divided into three parts: Powers, The Book of Ystwyth, and The Green World. And it is made up of formal poems: narratives, lyrics, monologues, blank verse, sonnet, couplets, Burmese climbing rhyme, the form of Puck's Song, nonce forms, even a poem in Renaissance poulter's measure. Like contemplating the leafy energy of the world, strange powers, beauty (the poems I wrote for Clive's retrospective are here), and transformation? Then you may want one of these special little books-to-be!

Mad Hatter's date book

On Thursday I mailed off page proofs for my next novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage.  Forthcoming: March 2012, Mercer University Press.  Now I am very close to sending off the tweaked-again version of Thaliad, my blank verse epic poem. (Being quite the mad hatter, I seem to have insisted on reading it yet another "one last time," but I hope to be done today or maybe tomorrow--have a sickie home today, alas.) Pub date:  January 2012, from Phoenicia Publishing in Montreal.

Then I am moving on to do a final polish on The Foliate Head,  forthcoming from Stanza Press in the U.K.  The Throne of Psyche is an unusually beautiful book: The Foliate Head will likewise be beautiful. It, too, will have a cover by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and it will also have three foliate heads as the division pages. Scrumptious. I will be working on it with Clive and book designer Andrew Wakelin, who did the two sumptuous books in honor of Clive's 60th birthday retrospective.

I also need to get rereading for a review of Bei Dao's selected poems from New Directions.  Any fans out there?

Thanks to all who put up with my over-busyness of late, and especially to those who have helped me get out the word about The Throne of Psyche. I am grateful. (Materials available on request for any other bloggers who want to help...)

More The Book of the Red King up soon.

Image credit: courtesy of victorianweb.org.

Another peep at Clive's monograph

A beautifully designed and written book is a wondrous thing to behold and hold. Click on the image to see a larger one of this double spread of imprint page and title page for the upcoming Lund Humphries / Gray Mare collection of essays, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, already discussed here.

(Except: I confess that mine is not an essay but a wild melange of fictive pieces, tiny stories, essay-like snippets, faux holy-book passage with lots of parallelism, etc. I fear that I no longer behave. )

This image was pilfered from Clive's artlog by some ranging, roaming web-gremlin. Somehow seeing it made me realize why he uses that particular style of shoes for his angels--see the little black wing-vents on the shoes: winged like the heels of Mercury. I don't know why that had never occurred to me before. Just dense, I suppose!

Book edited meticulously by Peter Wakelin. Scrumptious design by Andrew Wakelin.