posted on 04 Dec 2016

Veering North-Easterly : Poems by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Paintings by Gillian Crossley-Holland

This elegant little gem of a book brings together former husband and wife, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Gillian Crossley-Holland in an exploration of the elemental nature of the Norfolk and Suffolk coastal strand. It’s important to say from the outset that this isn’t a book of poems by Kevin using illustrations by Gillian but much more a symbiotic combination of poetry and painting that together create a sense of place that is genuinely three dimensional.

Kevin is a versatile writer who is probably most famous for his books for younger readers that bring the Arthurian myths to life but he is also a magnificent translator of Old English and no mean poet. Here we have ten short poems (plus an additional short Prayer on the back card cover) written over quite an extended period – the earliest dating from 1995 – but which have been skilfully brought together here to sit alongside each other and create something which is much more than a sum of its parts.

 

I very much like Crossley-Holland’s ability to use words in a way that evokes all of our senses; The Tide Rising for example is a symphony of colour, sounds and salt-flecked, ozone-tinged smells and tastes:

Drawn-deep, shell-shine, heart’s tide rising –

Rumouring, memory, sheenskin ripple –

Fingers, obsidian, asking all knowing –

Spark and spearflash, Sea-serpent, hiss –

Gossip and knock, knock, wave-whack, plunge –

Rib to furrow, salt-surge, ocean-rut –

Overlap, overrun, overcome, undermine –

 

 

And there’s the hissing sibilance of French Leave:

 

Sometimes the neap is surreptitious

so soft so steady there’s neither swill

nor suck as she slides into the muddy

staithe and lifts skiffs on their anchors

shifting, out-eager, dreaming of searoom.

He revels in and clearly enjoys his own creativity and relish for words which he has marshalled into an impressionistic portrait of a landscape or a seascape - or maybe a metaphor for our moods and emotions? He lifts our spirits with a welcoming back of migrating birds promising the end of winter and a rebirth for us all:

They’re back!

        Back from the capes

of Greenland, and Spitzbergen, Iceland......

......

Their fierce delight, rounding on a field

of waste potatoes, barley stubble –

or our own, knowing good times lie ahead?

 

Gillian Crossley-Holland is a hugely talented painter and illustrator who describes her art in this way on the Artworks website:

I am interested in intersections, crossing places, in those scenes where the earth is nothing more than a reflection of the sky; the edges of seas and shores, the salt marshes, the local fens all provide me with images in which to explore this notion of chance and change and reflection. As an artist, I also like the physical edges that form on the surface of my paintings, the unexpected marks that happen between one plane and another. 

This isn’t a big book and you’d expect bold panoramic paintings of sea and coast would suffer from being reproduced on quite a small scale but actually this isn’t true because The Green Dragon Press have done a fine job - the quality of the printing and the paper that has been used all help to keep the images sharp and clean.

The first edition of the book has been limited to just 1000 with the first 75 signed and numbered. There’s also a deluxe option which is available – 25 copies with a handwritten poem and an etching. How lovely!

 

Terry Potter

December 2016