Just published and illustrated Leah Fritz’s new Hearing Eye pamphlet, Gone. 36 pages, 3 full page illustrations. £5. Available from Central Books
Leah Fritz is an American feminist poet and author. Although she was born in the United States, Fritz has been active in England since she moved here in 1985.
Here are poems for Howard, her late husband of 62 years; remembrance of literary and political lives; imagined musings of an undrowned Shelley; thoughts on Ozymandias and other dictators; and sharp philosophical unpicking of relationships with poetry and psychoanalysis.
The Persian word (pairidaeza), from which our word paradise comes, means a walled garden.
In May 2006 I travelled to Iran on a Fellowship of Reconciliation peace delegation during a period of international tension over Iran’s nuclear programme. I was awarded a drawing bursary to document the experience.
The delegation itinerary was very intense, meeting with NGOs, community groups, academics, politicians, young people, and clerics, and also travelling through the country to visit antiquities and cultural sites. My drawings were, by neccessity, as speedy as our travelling. I then produced a body of images dealing with the complex relationships between Iran, oil and Britain. The work weaves together the larger international dynamics, the mutual cultural influences, and the more intimate personal connections of Iranian-British relations. In February 2013 I returned to Iran to continue the project to draw and talk to ordinary people about the effects of international sanctions.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks the ‘War on Terror’ was declared by the US and Britain and with the announcement of which countries were on the ‘Axis of Evil’ it was apparent that foreign policy would involve attacks or aggressive diplomacy against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, N. Korea. I felt that since we have been given so much advance notice of the atrocities that our government was willing to commit we have a duty to be well prepared to prevent these wars. It seemed that I, as a visual artist, could contribute to deflecting the propaganda preparation that is neccessary to turn a people and a country into enemies and ‘legitimate targets’.
The ‘war artist’ documents the process of war, and comments on the aftermath of war. This project is ‘pre-war art’—an equivalent process for a conflict that I hope may never take place. It deals with the themes that a war artist might deal with, but in a period of tension rather than after the outbreak of hostilities. My approach has been from the perspective of British relations with Persia and the intertwining of histories. Culturally, ‘Persia’ has been a potent influence on the British imagination—on poetry, on theatre, on story-telling, and on ceramics. Economically and politically, Iran has played an increasingly important role in British and Western imaginations as an oil producer, a militant Islamic state, and a suspected potential nuclear proliferator. Drawing Paradise on the ‘Axis of Evil’ is an attempt to use imaginative engagement to provoke a more rounded debate, by transcending labels such as ‘the axis of evil’ and to ground public debate in human realities. The Iran that is so widely feared is also a land that has produced, and continues to produce, gardens of paradise and poetry.
Below are some of the drawings.
And subsequent prints:
Mrs Jahangeer and the Shah of IranIran airbusChemical weapons in ParadiseSamples of the Oil SpiritThe Rose and the NightingaleOil NationalisationGateway of All NationsShredded Truth – C.I.A. documentsMajor Gerald Talbot and the Tobacco FatwaThe Blind CensorSouls in CabinetsBam EarthquakeThe SimorghQuanatsThe VeilTutus
Victor Hugo’s wonderful long poem The Big Story of the Lion was written for his grandchildren. It has been newly translated by Timothy Adès and illustrated by Emily Johns. This thick concertina book published by Hearing Eye is available from Inpress for £6.
These four poems are from a group ‘Saying it with Flowers’ that makes imaginative connections between lives of plants and human actions.
The poems, in settings of fear and danger, inspired the composer David Loxley-Blounts’s compostion DuoSet, four pieces for organ and solo instruments. The first performances took place at St Lawrence Jewry, Guildhall Yard, in the City of London, as part of a series of free lunchtime concerts on four Tuesdays in October 2016. They are illustrated with linocuts by Emily Johns.
Victor Hugo’s wonderful long poem The Big Story of the Lion was written for his grandchildren. It has been newly translated by Timothy Adès and illustrated by Emily Johns. This thick concertina book published by Hearing Eye is available from Central Books for £5.
Cookie to Witch is an Old Story
A poem by Leah Fritz
Five woodcuts by Emily Johns Letterpress printed by Peter Loyd at Holbeche Press. Published by Hearing Eye 20pp £9 ISBN 1 870841 97 2
Two children’s tales, ‘The Gingerbread Boy’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’, combine to create the central metaphor of the narrative poem, which follows the life of a runaway girl, from naivety through maturity and beyond. From Cookie to Witch is an Old Story was written at a time in my life when adolescent daughters were more and more away from home, travelling and/or at university. In psycho-babble, this is called ‘the empty nest syndrome’. It is, in any case, a time of transformation, the dying embers of useful parenthood from which a renewed sense of human purpose may, phoenix-like, arise.
At Cross Purposes
By Raymond Geuss
Illustrated with two papercuts by Emily Johns
Letterpress printed by Peter Lloyd at The Holbeche Press Published by Hearing Eye 18pp £6.00 ISBN 1870841794 Buy from Central Books
There were limits to the hospitality even of a Parisian monastery in the tenth century, a a wandering clerk from somewhere east of the Rhine discovers to his cost. The original bi-lingual text (in Old High German and Latin) which records the story of this unusual and amusing encounter is presented and translated here by Raymond Geuss.
Raymond Geuss, Professor of philosophy at Cambridge University and author of the seminal The Idea of a Critical Theory and Morality, Culture & History is also a poet.
Their Mountain Mother
by Edmund Prestwich 36 pages ISBN 978-1-905082-46-9 Published by Hearing Eye
This single long poem with four plates by printmaker Emily Johns deals with Lesotho, 1820-1824. Invaded by starving hordes from across the mountains, the Southern Sotho chiefdoms collapse in massacre and starvation. The tiny Mokoteli clan lies directly in the path of the invaders. The Mokoteli chief Moshoeshoe is both brave and wise. But will he be able to lead his people to safety?
“Edmund Prestwich’s small epic of indigenous Africa shows how a single figure can be the focus of a whole race. It is powerful story telling, adroit and incantatory. Laid throughout with rich, moving detail, it achieves great pathos and mythical force.” Ian Pople
“Emily Johns’ powerful linocuts continue the notable tradition of political illustration epitomized by the likes of Clifford Harper and Kathe Kollwitz.” Gareth Evans, Time Out
“This is beautiful writing, and it is a grand story with arresting illustrations from Emily Johns. At no point did I doubt the imaginative reality, the absolute commitment of Prestwich to reliving this tale. I was there with him.” Helena Nelson, Ambit
