Every now and again a small anthology of poets meet up with a small chorus of singer-songwriters and we create an evening called ‘Lyrical’. It’s about celebrating the undiscovered possibilities in words, read or sung.
Five of us have now made a small book, offering a lyrical twist on events we might ordinarily pass by without noticing: the cold-caller to your phone, that luminous guitar solo, the funeral cortege, the secret life of nature, the ways we miss each other. The poems are drawn from the ordinary and aspire to cast a small light back on it – the arc we wander from birth to death, the promise of faith, the price of love.
There’s also a sixth poet featured: the poem, Final Gift was the last one written by Mark Halliday before his death. Cole Moreton and I published a book of poems with Mark a few years back and sometimes we travelled to obscure locations and read them out loud to very select audiences. The close of Mark’s poem captures the intent in all our writing, ‘to hint at all I should have said but didn’t’.
The illustrator Hannah Cousins has created linocuts by hand from simple pencil drawings, inspired by the poems. Each drawing was covered in ink and pressed onto paper to print the final image. The artist Rob Pepper pulled everything together, looking after design and production – like Hannah a visual poet.
The book has a pretty limited print run but we might try and get it published online in the next few weeks.
by Martin Wroe.
