All books can be purchased from Central Books.
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