By Jane Routh
\nISBN 978-1-8383378-1-0
\nPrice \u00a35<\/p>\n
SOLD OUT<\/pre>\nThese thoughtful and elegantly written poems celebrate the way art responds to art, how personal engagement with the fruits of another\u2019s creativity can delve and open up beyond the image itself to explore history, landscape, imagination, the role of women artists and the nature of inspiration itself.<\/p>\n
“Each poem addresses a different, named, visual image, drawing the reader into her thoughtful, intimate musings…After<\/em> is an accomplished pamphlet, proving that lit fuse does spark something special down the line.” Maggie Mackay, Sphinx<\/p>\n
“The acid test for ekphrastic work is whether the poem stands on its own without reference to the source artwork. In this case, I think the author is entirely successful. The poems link back to the artwork, but knowledge of the work is not essential. The poems stand on their own. Seeing the artwork adds to and enhances the experience.<\/p>\n
Routh\u2019s mind floating free over the meaning of artworks, the way we interpret them and apply them to our own understanding. Routh is a story teller at heart.” Rennie Halstead, londongrip<\/p>\n
\nAfter<\/em><\/h4>\n
It could not have been otherwise
\nbut the way the novel ended
\nso filled the fiddler with sadness
\nhe opened the slow reel he was composing
\nwith a such long note of melancholy
\nit stopped the hand of the potter
\nlistening to it on the radio
\nso she spilled extra cobalt oxide
\ninto the glaze she was mixing
\nfor a vessel whose shading haunted
\nthe painter when he saw it exhibited
\nmany years later while working
\non an abstract which a sculptor
\nreading an exhibition catalogue late at night
\nreckoned caught something of the sea
\nin its shifts and distances
\nobsessing her with a waking-dream
\nabout a raft riding repeating waves
\nand had her messing with plaster and card
\nshe turned into a maquette of a boat
\nshe propped to dry on a few wooden skewers
\nas if it were walking on air
\nand whose frailty so excited a poet
\nwho dropped by for the Open Studios day
\nhe wrote a long poem titled \u2018After\u2019
\n\u2013 though that isn\u2019t the end of it
\nsince who knows what the lit fuse
\nrunning between makers unknown
\nto each other might spark down the line<\/p>\n