Sweet collaborations--

Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins and poet and Aberystwyth University professor (now department head and Rendel Professor) Damian Walford Davies talk about poetry, painting, collaboration, and more here. Various poets come in for a mention, sometimes obliquely, and Damian reads some of his poems inspired by Clive's paintings. I'm glad Clive also read a poem by his dear friend Catriona Urquhart, who passed from this world on May Day seven years back.

The recording is a little wonky at the start, but hang on.

* * *
In related news, today Clive will post an image of the hand-pulled bookplate for Thaliad. Those will go to the first 50 who bought the book after launch plus the hardcover pre-orderers, I believe. I'm grateful that he and Beth Adams are going to such pains.

Ghosts of Christmas past

In the tradition of the scholarly M.R. James, who always read a marvelous new one of his own composing at Christmas, it's time for a ghost story. And here's a new review of Ghosts by Gaslight,edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers. Must say about my mention that this is the first reviewer to imply that there might be a relationship between the mode in which the story is told and the identity of the narrator...

Evidently poet, professor, and twin (very ghostly, that!) Damian Walford Davies has started a Christmas Eve (or thereabouts) reading series featuring James stories by candlelight at the University of Aberystwyth. I wonder how many places have revived the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas--a wonderful idea.

Why I simply cannot pronounce Welsh

Standing, l-r: Callum James. Dave Bonta.
Seated, l-r: Damian Walford Davies, Ian Hamilton
who read for the late Catriona Urquhart, Andrea Selch,
Clive Hicks-Jenkins, and Marly Youmans.
The reading at Aberystwyth University Art Centre
for The Book of Ystwyth: Six poets on the art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Photo from Clive's Artlog.

One of the challenges of reading a poem with Welsh words in it was sounds so strange they reminded me of a cat with hairballs. Then there's that weird sound where you blow air from each side of your mouth at once...

Anyway, the following sums up why a goodly amount of fiery (yes, I have raging Welshmen and Welshwomen in my family tree, revolters from British rule, heroes and heroines of the wild, wild Southern end of the American Revolution) Welsh blood in my veins does not help me to pronounce. 

You may or may not know that there is a hymn tune called Llanfair. In the states, a popular hymn to that tune is "Jesus Christ is Risen Today," a song often heard at Easter. The name of the tune comes from the first two syllables of a Welsh village, Llanfairpwyllgwyngyllgogery-chwyrndobwllantysiliogogogoch. I am sorely, sorely afraid that I missed a pair of l's while copying that down... The name means something like this: The Church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel near the fast-running whirlpool of the church of St. Tysillio beside the red cave.

Now that is wondrous and beautiful and a poem of a name but impossible, isn't it?

A second scrumptious book with Clive Hicks-Jenkins

The Book of Ystwyth will be the most splendiferous poetry book on the planet come May! Until then, it's definitely The Throne of Psyche, thanks to a scrumptious jacket by Clive Hicks-Jenkins himself. The Book of Ystwyth is profusely illustrated, with poems by the late Catriona Urquhart, writer and dear friend of Clive's, as well as Dave Bonta, Callum James, Andrea Selch, Damian Walford Davies, and me.

Clive is an inspiring friend and a favorite penpal of mine, and I am out-of-all whooping glad to be associated with him on a fourth project. Trala for dancing a dance across the lines of the arts!

These cover and interior images are pilfered from a feast for eyes and mind--Clive's artlog here. It is a grand place to visit, one of the sites that makes the web magical.

O wonderful,
wonderful,
and most wonderful!
and yet again wonderful,
and after that,
out of all whooping!

--William Shakespeare

"Fire in the Labyrinth" in CLIVE HICKS-jENKINS

FORTHCOMING

My gallimaufry of pieces, "Fire in the Labyrinth" (excerpts below), is forthcoming in a marvelous anthology titled Clive Hicks-Jenkins, available from Ashgate/Lund Humphries in conjunction with Grey Mare Press and Clive's 60th-birthday retrospective exhibit of paintings at the National Library of Wales. My contribution tells the story of Clive's withdrawal from the world (after a life in the theatre) at Tretower Castle and dives into paintings for wild Clive-ish new--an examination of the buttons of angels, a playground beyond the world, tea in the garden with Cocteau and manifestation of saints and much more.

FIRE IN THE LABYRINTH - CONTENTS

Tretower
Kevin and the Blackbird’s Nest
The Tea Party
Holy the Negative Space
The Congregation of Birds
Buttons
The Count of Three
The Book of the Phoenix, 1: 1-40
Tender Blackbird
Blue and Red
Labyrinth of the World

from "Tretower"

Some days the landscape is so harsh and cold and empty that he imagines himself the last human being in the world, and his tongue cleaves to his mouth. Some days the strange energies of the place possess him, and he could weep for the loveliness that cracks him in two. The very stones of Tretower seem to prophesy that he will not be as he has been, that the man who braves seven years in the wilderness may yet wrench a blessing from the place. When tourists appear from nowhere, he hardly remembers how to form syllables—then speaks all in a rush. But abruptly they are gone, and the bigness of the place and the silence that is no silence (insects, birds, the slamming of the wind) seizes him once more.

When he flings himself on the earth, Tretower looms over him. The birds come and cover him with leaves. The wild winds flatten and tear at the grasses. The frost giants tug at the stones.

“That was all long ago,” people say; “long ago he came out of the wilderness with his staring eyes that had the look of one who has wrestled with some fearsome angel.”

from "The Tea Party"

When did the saints appear in the garden? Half-hidden by trees, they are watching the two artists. The sunshine brightens on stone and leaf. The Virgin Mary steps into the clearing and looks wonderingly at the two men and the teapot and cups and the cut slabs of bara brith. Cocteau gets up immediately, but the painter does not move.

“The clarity of a dream,” he says.

The light increases enormously, and the paths and trees burn, every pebble and twig distinctly present. The painter’s hands tremble as he drinks in the brilliance and crisp edges of the garden, the glimpses of saints, and the young Virgin, her crimped hair veering from her head like a cockeyed halo.

This is what I wanted, he thinks, more light and every intent so clear. Color that says anything is possible. Nothing hidden.

Cocteau is looking at the pale lime green of his hands and laughing as shafts of young trees slide upward in unexpected blue twilight. Sunflowers break from the earth, shoving six feet into the air. God in the form of an angel plummets from the clouds and seizes the Virgin by the wrist.

ABOUT THE ANTHOLOGY

The information below is from the Ashgate website, with a few small changes.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Imprint: Lund Humphries
Illustrations: Includes c.150 colour illustrations
Published: April 2011
Extent: 200 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-1-84822-082-9
Price : $70.00 » Website price: $63.00

Contributors: Simon Callow, Damian Walford Davies, Andrew Green, Rex Harley, Kathe Koja, Anita Mills, Montserrat Prat, Jacqueline Thalmann, Peter Wakelin and Marly Youmans.

Critic Nicholas Usherwood has described the painting of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (b.1951) as 'reflective, expressive painting of the highest order'. From a background as a choreographer and theatre director, Hicks-Jenkins has since the 1990s become increasingly well-known as a painter, producing exploratory sequences of works that embrace diverse subject-matter with a consistent and distinctive vision. His paintings are now held in all the principal public collections in Wales and his artists' books are in libraries worldwide; he is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University.

Available here.

More information on a second book with a contribution from me and timed for the retrospective will be posted soon.