MA Illustration: Authorial Practice – Exhibition Next Week!

We are excited to announce an exhibition taking place next week as part of the Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival.  Seeing Voices is an exhibition of illustration and poetry, celebrating recent work by students, alumni and staff of Falmouth University’s MA Illustration: Authorial Practice course.

The exhibition will open Tuesday 20 November – Saturday 24 November in the Upper Gallery of The Poly, Falmouth

All welcome to the private view which is taking place between 5.30pm – 7.30pm on Thursday 22 November, followed by Poetry Slam from 8.00pm.

‘An Hour to Sing – A Journey of Following’

An Hour to Sing – A Journey of Following by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe, is a collaboration featuring drawing and writing, published in Edition Three of Elementum Journal.

Images of ‘An Hour to Sing – a Journey of Following’ by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe from Edition three of Elementum Journal

Caroline Blythe, a recent BA(Hons) Drawing graduate of Falmouth School of Art, and Dr. Kym Martindale, Senior Lecturer in Falmouth’s School of Writing and Journalism have, over the last three years, been collaborating on a project that has sought to explore and respond to Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, an account of a bicycle ride from Guildford to Somerset in 1913.

Between 2012 and 2017, poet and cyclist Kym Martindale began the pursuit of Edward Thomas, riding and writing parts of Thomas’s journey from Winchester to the Quantocks in Somerset. In 2014, Caroline Blythe joined in, equipped with OS maps, and a copy of In Pursuit of Spring, and set off to explore and discover the landscape and locations described in poetry and prose by Martindale and Thomas.

For practical reasons both Kym and Caroline split Thomas’ journey into three distinct areas, visiting these when time allowed, following Thomas on bicycle, foot and at times by car. They recorded snippets of time and place ­– observing and notating the landscape as they travelled. The result is a collection of poems by Dr Kym Martindale and drawings by Caroline Blythe recently published in Edition Three of Elementum Journal.

Images of ‘An Hour to Sing – a Journey of Following’ by Kym Martindale and Caroline Blythe from Edition three of Elementum Journal

We talked with Caroline and Kym to find out more…

Caroline says, “It has been an absolute pleasure to discover and explore both the countryside in the south of England, described so beautifully by Edward Thomas, and also respond to and work with Kym’s wonderful poems, while at the same time recording my own visual observations. As I travelled through the locations described by Edward Thomas and Kym, capturing fleeting moments in sketchbooks, I kept thanking them for introducing me to these beautiful and interesting places. It was a privilege to experience the landscape through their eyes as well as observe for myself. It was a fascinating process. Perhaps the most exciting visual outcomes from this project evolved through this collaborative working process which led to the creation and compiling of palimpsests – an interleaving of tracings of drawings.”

Kym adds, “This research project combined two great passions of mine, poetry and cycling. In Pursuit of Spring describes a landscape on the brink of change, but it is the cradle too of so much of Thomas’s poetry, and an index to the man himself. The poems and drawings are ‘re/tracings’ of journeys made by Thomas, then myself, then Caroline, through a landscape that is constantly changing economically, politically, and aesthetically. And about halfway through the project, we suddenly realised that although we each travelled alone, we were also together in the journey we were making. I am sorry in some measure, that we have arrived.”

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Elementum, founded by Falmouth MA graduate Jay Armstrong, is a biannual publication of new writing and visual arts that explores the natural world and our role within it. Through folklore, literature, poetry, science and specially commissioned art and photography, Elementum quietly brings the reader back to what really matters by nurturing our connection to the natural world and the myths that surround it. The theme of the third edition is ‘roots’ and explores our origins and what sustains us.

If you would like to know more about Elementum journal or purchase a copy of the publication, you can do so by visiting their website: https://www.elementumjournal.com/

MA Illustration host symposium on Friday 11 November as part of Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival

Falmouth University’s MA Illustration: Authorial Practice will be hosting a symposium next Friday 11 November as part of the Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival.  The event will take place at 3.00 – 5.00pm in Lecture 2 on the Falmouth campus.  The event is unticketed and free to both Falmouth University staff and students.  Please arrive early to secure your seat – doors will close once the seating is full.

The theme is ‘Creative collaboration between poets and illustrators’ and will be chaired by Dr Kym Martindale, Course Coordinator on Falmouth’s BA Creative Writing.  The symposium will feature poetry readings by Luke Thompson and Em Strang, and panel discussions with illustrators Mairead Dunne and Mat Osmond, with Steve Braund, Course Coordinator on Falmouth’s MA Illustration and Director of Atlantic Press.

Further information here: Cornwall Contemporary Poetry Festival

Illustration Award for Mat Osmond

The Michael Marks Awards are now in their seventh year, and in 2015 a new ‘Best Illustration’ prize was awarded which was won by Mat Osmond, Senior Lecturer on MA Illustration at Falmouth.  Speaking about the new Illustration prize, Wordsworth Trust Director Michael McGregor says “This year for the first time we are delighted to announce an additional award for illustration, promoting the poetry pamphlet as an object of visual as well as of poetic beauty”.  The new award ‘recognises outstanding illustration of a poetry pamphlet published between July 2014 and June 2015’.  The judge, Nicholas Penny, was asked to ‘consider illustration in any medium and look for a subtle and sustained relationship between image and text, as well as the overall quality of the images’.

The Awards have been presented by The Wordsworth Trust and the British Library, with the support of the Michael Marks Charitable Trust.  They have established themselves as one of the most significant awards in contemporary poetry, designed to raise the profile of poetry pamphlets, recognising the enormous contribution that they make to the poetry world.

Illustration Award Judge, Nicholas Penny (Director of the National Gallery, London from 2008 – 2015), wrote the following piece of Mat’s award winning pamphlet:

“Mat Osmond’s pamphlet Deadman and Hare:part 1, Fly Sings, published by Strandline Books, designed by Pirrip Press, is illustrated in an elegant but economic manner with black and white images which are sometimes miniature and specific and sometimes mysteriously abstract. They provide a sort of pictorial punctuation, cunningly placed and spaced, between and beneath the lines – thus, one cannot miss them or think of the poetry without them.”

The winners were announced at a special dinner at the British Library attended by an invited audience of poets, publishers, critics and supporters of poetry on the evening of Tuesday 24 November 2015.  The winner of the Poetry Pamphlet Award was ‘The First Telling’ by Gill McEvoy and the Publisher’s Award was won by Edinburgh based Mariscat Press.