We love a beautiful book cover and work hard to make our books visually strong. Sally Castle has designed many covers for Two Rivers Press. She writes here about the inspiration for the cover artwork for The Constitutionals by Peter Robinson, which explores and celebrates the therapeutic links between reading, writing, walking and thinking through a fictional treatment of the meditative author’s convalescent wanderings around the town of Reading.
Sally writes:
The illustration started with drawings made as an immediate intuitive response while reading the manuscript. Images such as land marks: the Cemetery Junction arch and the Wycliffe Church; trees: a magnolia and a monkey puzzle outside a house in Eastern Avenue, buildings: New Town terrace houses and the gas holder, the Co-op with clock at ten past six and the green tiled Oxfam book shop. All familiar places to me: literally, in that I was born at 27 Hatherley Road, my grandparents lived at number 30, uncle and aunt lived at 68 Amity Road in New Town. Grandfather and uncle used to meet up at Cemetery junction to watch the traffic!
Several versions were developed combining the images together using watercolour and collaged with an old street map, a receipt from the Co-op (Your store Your say) and Robinson Crusoe as portrayed in an early illustrated edition. The result was also simplified down to a flat linocut print but the watercolour collage with a stormy sky was the best choice to ‘ventriloquize the grateful dead’
Thanks to Peter for asking me to do his cover and to Nadja Guggi for her support, encouragement and working magic with her technical expertise.
Sally Castle is a printmaker, illustrator and lettering artist, based in Ruscombe. You can see more of her work on her website http://www.sallycastle.co.uk
Buy a copy of The Constitutionals here.
Here’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking review of Kate Behrens’s ‘Penumbra‘ from Michael Begnal, recently published in ‘Empty Mirror‘
“Penumbra” is one of those words that I always think I know the meaning of, but then I realize I need to look it up again to make sure. … There is no poem called “Penumbra” in this, Kate Behrens’s third collection, but the word works well as an all-inclusive title, for Behrens writes about the shadowy and the marginal, and the way that death or deaths bring previously indefinite feelings into stark, vivid relief.
For the official launch of Rural Reading, Adrian Lawson and Geoff Sawers led a walk from the Caversham foot bridge to Kennetmouth, via View Island, pointing out interesting plants and habitats and sharing their knowledge of the green spaces along the way. The sun shone and it was a fascinating walk. And at Kennetmouth there awaited cakes, elderflower fizz and copies of the new book!
About Rural Reading: The book takes us through the calendar year with a selection of articles from Adrian Lawson’s long-running newspaper column, Rural Reading, plus some new and previously unpublished pieces. Accompanied by perceptive and very personal illustrations from Geoff Sawers, equally devoted to the natural history of Reading, this exquisite collection will open your eyes to the wild side of town. Buy your copy here!
Point of Honour – translations by Lesley Saunders of poems selected by Maria Teresa Horta, renowned Portuguese writer and life-long feminist – is the first anthology of her poetry in English. Lesley was invited to participate in a conference held in Lisbon to celebrate the life and work of Maria Teresa, and to launch the book in front of an international audience of writers and academics. She says:
… the conference was fantastic: three days of celebration of Maria Teresa Horta’s work – her journalism, her novels and short stories, and her poetry – by feminists and academics from all over the world and culminating with a series of homages by well-known Portuguese literary and political figures.
The launch of Point of Honour was well-received (I even gave a short speech in Portuguese!) and people seem truly grateful that Teresa’s work will be able to reach a wider audience.
Ana Raquel Fernandes, who wrote the introduction to Point of Honour, invited me to spend the weekend at her family’s seaside home in Santa Cruz, so we were able to relax on the beach after the intensity of the conference.
Here are a just a few of the many photos I took:
