When it comes to poetry from the sodden North, of soft days and spagnum moss, no better man…
Anahorish by Seamus Heaney
‘My ‘place of clear water,’
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass
and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,
after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows
those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills.’
Soon there will be flowers…
And until then I will bear this in mind as I walk home tonight through the woods, sans umbrella, sans torch…
To Go in the Dark by Wendell Berry
‘To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.’
We will be making our way to the London Art Fair in January. The fair takes place from 16- 21 January. If you would like a ticket please let me know – we have a limited number of day tickets available. Below – a couple of tasters for the fair.
From ‘A Dream of Solstice’ by Seamus Heaney
‘Like somebody who sees things when he’s dreaming
And after the dream lives with the aftermath
Of what he felt, no other trace remaining,
So I live now’, for what I saw departs
And is almost lost, although a distilled sweetness
Still drops from it into my inner heart.
It is the same with snow the sun releases,
The same as when in wind, the hurried leaves
Swirl round your ankles and the shaking hedges
That had flopped their catkin cuff-lace and green sleeves
Are sleet-whipped bare. Dawn light began stealing
Through the cold universe to County Meath,
Over weirs where the Boyne water, fulgent, darkling,
Turns its thick axle, over rick-sized stones
Millennia deep in their own unmoving
And unmoved alignment. And now the planet turns
Earth brow and templed earth, the crowd grows still
In the wired-off precinct of the burial mounds,
Flight 104 from New York audible
As it descends on schedule into Dublin,
Boyne Valley Centre Car Park already full,
Waiting for seedling light on roof and windscreen.
And as in illo tempore people marked
The king’s gold dagger when it plunged it in
To the hilt in unsown ground, to start the work
Of the world again, to speed the plough
And plant the riddled grain, we watch through murk
And overboiling cloud for the milted glow
Of sunrise, for an eastern dazzle
To send first light like share-shine in a furrow
Steadily deeper, farther available,
Creeping along the floor of the passage grave
To backstone and capstone, holding its candle
Under the rock-piled roof and the loam above
A big thank you to everyone who has visited the gallery in the last twelve months, to emailers and gmailers, yahoos, Instagrammers and twitterers (twits? X-ers?). For messaging about work, about poetry, for ‘just looking’, for coming in to see where the Roman Baths were (round the corner). I am sincerely grateful to everyone who has supported us and the many talented artists we are privileged enough to be exhibiting.
There has been loss this year- of artists, friends, colleagues, precious people who have walked these rooms many times, not to be forgotten.
Galway Kinnell ‘The Vow’
‘When the lover goes,
the vow though broken remains,
that trace of eternity love
brings down among us stays,
to give dignity to the suffering
and to intensify it.’
Please click on images to go to individual artists’ web pages.
Any questions, queries, or for further information please phone or email.
We can take payment by phone and we ship worldwide.
Thank you for reading, and a happy and peaceful Christmas to one and all.
Aidan.
