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"

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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...

Maquettes for Paul and all

Almost noon, and a snowy Saturday is well underway... The wandering husband is no longer racing on horseback to the pyramids at Giza but is back in Morocco. Meanwhile I've taken the youngest to wrestling and gone to the store and picked him up and hunted black pants and then followed the school marching band to lay wreaths in memory of our veterans while I thought about Causley's "At the British War Cemetery, Bayeux" and about my father, who at seventeen ran away from his life as a sharecropper's child and flew runs over Germany and France. Pax tecum.

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Film link:
http://www.culturecolony.com/videos?id=5571

Paul Digby asked to see the little movie of maquettes by artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins yesterday. I sailed it his way, and Paul afterward said that I had not posted a link here... Well, maybe I did, but it's worth another look.  And I snitched the remarks Clive made on his blog about the making of this little film--addressed to "Gerwyn." You will notice that Clive is a very kind person; probably more than one take would be better!

Clive:
Oddly enough, I know exactly what you mean about the maquette film. It does have an hypnotic/trance-like quality. I noticed the first time Pete Telfer showed it to me. I think there are a number of reasons why. 

Marly Youmans, poet and author of the chapter on the ‘miraculous’ in the monograph, travelled from her home in New York State to Wales for the exhibition opening, arriving a week early so as to spend some time with us. Pete Telfer had already filmed the live-action linking footage for the film, and was waiting for me to come over to his place to record the narration, which was to be drawn from the chapter by another American contributor to the book, Kathe Koja. Kathe’s piece on maquettes was beautifully written… she’s an acclaimed novelist… but she was unable to come to Wales as she had to be in the US to complete a stage adaptation of her last book. I had supposed I would read her words myself, though intuition told me that an American accent would suit better, as would a woman’s voice. Enter Marly, who graciously agreed to stand in for Kathe. The sections of narration were recorded in Pete’s young daughter’s bedroom. (Thank you Alis!) With Pete… who is not built daintily… his recording machine and huge microphone plus Marly… who is dainty… crammed into the small toy-filled space, the only place left for me was a mattress on the floor, from where I offered occasional directions. (Marly says that I lay there in my sunglasses, which sounds very louche!) Marly is a ‘one-take’ kind of a girl, and it was her innate poet’s rhythm and dreamy, Southern-accented delivery that resulted, in part, in the hypnotic quality of the film. Pete had not initially been won over by the notion of a narration, but as soon as he heard his playback of Marly, he was enthusiastic to use the recordings.

The other aspect that lends the hypnotic quality is the soundtrack Pete recorded at Ty Isaf on the beautiful Spring day he came to film the linking sections. The sash-window of the blue bedroom where we filmed was open, and as I hung the maquettes on thin thread in the aperture, we were surrounded by the sounds of nesting birds in the rookery beyond, a perfect accompaniment to the painted card figures swaying in the breeze. The first animation sequence by contrast is completely without sound, which further emphasises a dream-like state, because it feels as though the puppet is in an other-worldly vacuum. (My head?)

Gerwyn, I’m delighted that you like Pete’s film so much. I think that it perfectly captured the spirit of the moment in the week before the exhibition opened, and it’s great that you ‘got it’. Everything about it was improvised, from the animation sequences made in a single afternoon and evening on our dining room floor and table (my partner Peter taking the stills while I animated the figures) to the last minute idea to film the maquettes on threads in the window. Pete is a guerilla-film-maker, enthusiastically throwing himself into the spirit of creativity wherever he finds it. The man is a force of nature!

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And now I really must get down to work!

Clive at The Gregynog Gallery, 2

Here are more pictures of the preparations for the retrospective of Clive Hicks-Jenkins at The Gregynog Gallery of The National Library of Wales. If you peek around, you may see:  Clive with Iwan of the White Gloves; Clive with Peter Wakelin; St. George; my bedroom at Ty Isaf (how did that get in there? wasn't he cute to provide a bear?) complete the two books published in honor of Clive and his retrospective; me looking just arrived, jet-lagged, and hanging on to Clive as though I might slide off into the abyss of sleep (my double-jointedness is showing); Ezekiel; still life paintings waiting patiently; the car leftover from the prior last show.

Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part three

The owner of a crafts gallery in North Carolina has prodded me to get moving on the Wales Album; she wants to see more pottery... So off we go to Wales once more. Be sure and click to make the images larger if you want to catch Jack in the garden or glimpse poppies and bluebells.

Meri Wells with me and cups and the feet of Peter Wakelin.
Clive Hicks-Jenkins behind my little camera.
The barn ruins in the background...



"We can't all be Mad Hatters" --Wizard Howl

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--
    from Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Swing,"
       from A Child's Garden of Verses

Peter's feet again leading the way over a slope
decked out in English bluebells and mango-colored
and orange Welsh poppies.

A Meri-flock a-flying--

A rabbit friend, come to hide in the bracken
and munch on bluebells and poppies
and forget-me-nots.

Wales Album: visiting Meri Wells, part one

Wandering, I find pottery guardians in the garden.
Am I in Wales?  Elsewhere, I think.

A glimpse of the ceramics studio and sheep field beyond,
with a table topped with an old piece of slate
that Meri traded for some concrete blocks.

A headless and quartered creature
pinned to the boards!

Meri Wells's studio, with a view of field and mountain.

Here I am rambling the yard--
earth alive with little scenes,
cunning nooks and crannies and surprises.



Table offerings...



Guard of the boundary between realms?
Warrior shepherd who bars the way?

A peep at the seventeenth-century house.
The thick flagstones inside are laid
directly on the ground, and sometimes
shift when the field mice tunnel underneath.



Maen hir of clay, pierced for looking

into another world.

Monolith among the bluebells.

Tea in the cool Welsh afternoon.

Meri Wells and Clive Hicks Jenkins,

with Peter Wakelin taking his ease on the grass.





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.

Hicks-Jenkins 60th-birthday retrospective

I've been working on a delicious project for Clive Hicks-Jenkins: pieces related to Clive's angels, annunciations, prophets, and saints, to be published in a volume honoring Clive's 60th birthday in 2011. The occasion will be not just his birthday but a major retrospective exhibition at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. I'm afraid that I have rioted through his pictures with much abandon and will probably be labeled as the writer who misbehaved--misbehaved, I hope, with love and style and suitable mystery.

One of the splendid things about the lives of people who are impelled to write or paint and do other forms of art that demand many hours of solitude is the finding of kindred spirits along the way. Clive is one of mine, and I am glad that he and Peter Wakelin asked me to participate. I imagine that Clive knew I would misbehave.

Painting: "The Virgin of the Goldfinches" (2009.) Acrylic on panel, 112 x 82 cm.