Irene Vidal is the illustrator and designer behind our new title Charles Causley: A Portrait of the Poet, which we’re publishing for The Causley Trust. I caught up with her this week to talk about the project.
Seeing Voices
We’re excited to be involved in Seeing Voices, an exhibition of poetry and illustration opening in the Upper Gallery of The Poly in Falmouth. The exhibition will be open from the 20th-24th of November, with a private view on Thursday 22nd November (this Thursday) as part of the biennial Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival.
The show gathers work from students, staff and alumni of Falmouth University’s MA Illustration: Authorial Practice course, with a specific focus on poetry and illustration. Several Atlantic Press collaborators will feature in the exhibition, including Phyllida Bluemel, who illustrated On Ridgegrove Hill, Mat Osmond who illustrated Stone and John Kilburn, author of 72 Hours.
The exhibition will also make a feature of our friends at Guillemot Press who specialise in illustrated poetry and have worked with a number of students and graduates of the MA including Lucy Kerr, who illustrated A Day That You Happen to Know and C F Sherratt who worked with Sarah Cave on Like Fragile Clay.
Image from The Clearing by Luke Thompson and Mairead Dunne (showing)
As well as being a group show of poetry and illustration, Seeing Voices includes a collaborative body of new work based on Brendan Kennelly’s long poem The Man Made of Rain.
The Man Made of Rain is an autobiographical account of visions Kennelly had during quadruple bypass surgery, exploring the boundaries between life and death.
All of the contributing artists to the wider show were also invited to submit a piece (or pieces) of new work to illustrate a line from The Man Made of Rain, the result is a reconfigurated version of Kennelly’s original poem, accompanied by beautiful, thoughtful visuals from some of the most exciting illustrative practitioners we know.
Image from Mouth by Hannah Levene and Catrin Morgan (showing)
If all that wasn’t enough, the show will also include a first glimpse at our upcoming publication. Keep an eye out in the coming days for an official announcement.
As usual, we’ll have a table of beautiful books in the space, which you’ll be able to come and see all week, as will Guillemot Press, and there will also be a huge selection of books, prints and originals by the showing illustrators for sale.
We hope to see you there.
BCZF 2016
We recently tabled at Bristol Comic & Zine Fair 2016. It was a brilliant fair full of excellent comics, zines, artist books, prints and made objects. There was a great atmosphere, with screen-printing workshops, live drawing, and many of the writers and artists involved in making the books on sale available to talk about the work.
Some of our highlights were Arabella Simpson’s zines, Breakdown Press for their beautiful risographed books, Simeon Davies’ poetry comics, The Sad Ghost Club, Lines of Inquiry’s delightfully varied graphic novels and artist books, Rebecca K Jones’ new zine ‘Let’s Go Home’ and Peter Morey’s ‘The Zahir’ which was on show for the first time. There was also stellar work from Froglump, Tara McInerney, Emily Gilbert and 12pt Press.
Credit to Eileen Long for the photos.
Beautiful books
We asked our current intern Antonia Di’Fonzo from The Roseland Community College to pick and review a few of her favourite books from the Atlantic Press library…
‘People I’ve Never Met & Conversations I’ve Never Had’ by Nick White
Published by Nobrow Press 2009. ISBN 978-0-9562135-1-8
‘ This book has a very personal feel. You almost feel that by reading it you’re prying into someone’s scrap book. The way that it is written is very informal and not in a way that should be read by anyone but the author. It’s a very relaxed and chilled out book which stems from the informality of its pages. The illustrations are beautiful and very varied but all contribute to the relaxed and informal aesthetic. Nothing in the book is uniform or regimented allowing the reader to mirror the author in having total freedom with the book. The book is very playful and different to other books.’
‘Tree of Codes’ by Jonathan Safran Foer
Published by Visual Editions 2010. ISBN 978-0-9565692-1-9
‘This story is told over a series of incomplete pages. The story itself is complete, the message delivered is complete but the words on each page are sparse. The idea of a book coming from the imagination to plant a seed of a story and then interpreted by another’s to flourish is present in every story. This specific book however does not only allow the story to be imagined but also the book itself.’
‘Box’ by Chris Bianchi
Self-published as Outlaw books. One of 25 copies printed at the RCA 2005.
‘This book is particularly unusual due to the fact that it’s covers are plain and it’s pages are black. The black pages offer an aspect of uniqueness. Due to all the wording and illustrations being in white, this book gives a real contrast to the norm. The dark brings around the unknown. Taking that in, a large majority of the book is unknown meaning and much is left down to the reader and their interpretations.’