Owl, egg, and Raine

Clive Hicks-Jenkins decoration for Thaliad

Alexander

I was so flooded with energy yesterday that I stayed up until precisely 3:19 writing an essay about masks and William Alexander's Goblin Secrets for the National Book Awards blog... I haven't done that in a while, though I did write one book that way when I was younger. Although I am naturally a night owl, my natural owlishness has been hampered by the need to get children out of bed very early in the morning. And now I have no doubt the essay is too long and will have to be cut. But I am feeling mild and pleasantly tired as a result.

Raine

I've promised a little essay on Kathleen Raine to Mezzo Cammin, so maybe I ought to go reread some Raine. Here she is at the Poetry Archive.

And another of his for The Foliate Head

Beginning again

Oddly or perhaps not so oddly, I've had a large number of conversations relating to the idea mentioned earlier that artists always begin from nothing--or from nothing but the created world--each time they begin a work. Writers and painters seem to find this compelling. We begin ab ovo, and sometimes we get a spoiled yolk, and sometimes we get Helen and fall into beauty pageants and the Trojan War.

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Meeting me elsewhere: excerpts from 2012 books (A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Thaliad, The Foliate Head) at Scribd. Thaliad at Phoenicia Publishing. (Thaliad is on sale during Poetry Month.) See page tabs above for review clips and information on those brand new books plus The Throne of Psyche from 2011, and more.

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.