Giles Watson's Blog, page 5

Whale Breathing

One of the most rewarding things an author can do is to collaborate with a songwriter. Whale Breathing is an album of songs and poems on themes of ocean conservation. All proceeds from sales of the album go to Sea Shepherd. It is available here:

https://simonekeane.bandcamp.com/albu...

A Burnished Echo

The latest book of John Lincoln's exquisite paintings, accompanied by twelve poems of mine, is now available.

These twelve pictures by John Lincoln and twelve poems by Giles Watson are united by their emphasis on the shades of yellow which lend such vibrance to natural scenes. From the colours of leaves and catkins, through evening reflections on the surface of a pool, to the hues of sunlight itself, the paintings and poems dwell on the subject of illumination in nature.

A Secret Garden

John Lincoln and I are delighted to announce this new little book of twelve poems and twelve paintings.

A visual metaphor, an archetype and a place to which we may retreat in our dreams: many of us have secret garden in our unconscious, or even in our conscious fantasies. These drawings and poems explore the tension between nature and nurture which is characteristic both of real gardens, and of the gardens in our imagination.

A Secret Garden

Myriad Circles

Here is a poem from Myriad Circles, my book of poems with drawings by John Lincoln:

Nature-Myth
(Poem by Giles Watson. Drawing by John Lincoln.)

The Great Serpent is ovo-viviparous: the worlds she births
hatch instantly into snakes, and rush to shelter under her
thousand tongues. She can spit starlings out of the sky,
drink whole rivers, disarticulate her jaw to encompass
nebulae and black holes. A billion times or more, she
has become flesh, looped her coils about the ivy roots
climbing a stone wall, sloughed her skin on gorse, slipped
into the brook for chasing frogs, intertwined with those
venomous suitors of hers, hibernated in the cracks
between mossy rocks. Some swerve to kill her; others
gasp with awe – but out of the idea of her have grown
tentacles and tails, whips and tethers, tramlines, tunnels,
the rampant, hooded phallus, the sceptre and the noose.

So, Great Serpent, you have come to the spawning-place
to create, and out of you must burst a myriad pregnant circles.

Bloom

Here is a poem from Bloom, a book illustrated by John Lincoln:

Magnolia Lightbound
(Poem by Giles Watson. Painting by John Lincoln.)

The first magnolia sought the warmth before the age of bees.
Cretaceous sunlight streamed through ferns, warming
the long articulated backs of dragonflies, the soft flanks
of dinosaurs, and that fresh bud, almost broken, was webbed
about with rays, the tepals leathery, carpels hardened
for loving ravages of beetles, clanking in their carapaces.

This descendent arches the driveway, drops spent blooms
on the verandah to be speared by stilettoes and strewn
into the hall – but stretching trembling arms, a child
cups a growing blossom in her hand, feels warmth
on her highlights, breathes leaf-mould, hears a beetle’s wing.

She thrills to strains of ancientness; the buds begin to sing.