art people place

Poppies in Cyprus

2025-07-13T16:21:00.002+01:00

In Flanders fields^[1] the poppies grow from Ypres’ site of destruction and death, bringing its bright blooms of life back to the place. The jolly bobbing flowers with their delicate, silken petals are at odds with the churned up fields of devastation from which they grow.

As I was reminded as I wandered the necropolis of Kato Paphos, Cyprus. The battle fields of Ypres now (I have visited) are a beautifully respected and cared for monument to the fallen, shining white rows of headstones with a name and story for each. A similar feeling of respect and honour greets me at Paphos, with its elegantly carved underground burial chambers to hold the dead in their final resting place. The site is like its own city for those who have passed, with courtyards, pathways and doorways into chambers, and sculpted pillars as memorial homage.

Carved entirely into solid natural rock, the doorways are surrounded by bright red poppies growing anywhere they can take hold in the dusty, baked soil. Swathes of sunshine-coloured crown daisies cover the hills above the graves, with clusters of scarlet poppies spilling out and down below. The further I wandered the more prevalent the poppies became. What is a sombre place, of burial for the dead, first built in the third century BC, is lifted by the joyful heads of the poppies.

On return to England, I held these images in my mind’s eye, with the sense of the poppy as the hope that springs out of demolished soil and grows around the graves of the passed. As I wrote about the year’s climate change-induced phenomena in California, including at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, I kept a glimmer of hope in ecological time (a timespan much longer than we are used to envisioning), where poppy seeds can rest undisturbed for eighty years underground until the churning of the soil brings them to the surface and the light brings forth their blooms again. Nature is resilient and waits the long game, a mindset that we would benefit from having, to invest now for a future beyond ourselves.

The new issue of IMMINENT (with my sketches of poppies in Cyprus) is titled Rage and Hope. You can read more and order issues from my online shop.

[1] In Flanders Fields is a poem by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian soldier in WW1. He wrote the poem after the Second Battle of Ypres when he noticed how quickly poppies appeared around the graves of his fellow soldiers. Its image of the red poppies resulted in the poppy becoming a symbol of memorial for those who have died in conflict.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

IMMINENT Issue 10 - blue moon

2024-11-16T14:20:00.002+00:00

IMMINENT Issue 10 arrives with the autumn dark and clear, cold skies, bright moons and longer nights, as the temperatures begin to fall.

Issue 10 is called blue moon - a blue moon being the name for an unusual event, and indeed the next blue moon will not be seen until 31st May 2026. This will be a monthly blue moon, meaning that it will be the second full moon falling within that month.

The other monthly full moons all have their own names, and the particularly bright supermoons that we have had in recent months inspired me to make this issue. We contemplate why the moons have their names, why we feel we have to name things, and the limitations of words to understand the full nature of nature's universe around us.

Artwork by Carole Miles appears throughout the issue, created using handmade cuts and prints that are then digitally manipulated and transformed once again by me as they translate into the zine riso print medium. I love this kind of collaborative creation that the zine allows me. Carole's images draw connections between the moon's phases and the hands that tend the gardens, Carole being both an artist and a keen gardener. Mark Goodwin's poems connect our ways of knowing through fingertips and the senses, and Anna Reckin's poem considers the ways that we use words to describe and name the Blue Bell. Kate Silkosi's autumn's edge is a visual poem which questions the use of words at all.

As I write this, on the 16th November, last night was a final supermoon for the year. I have had some astonishing encounters with supermoons this year, managing to find places away from artificial city lights and experience those clear, dark skies. This issue will be my reminder of that year.

Kate Siklosi is a writer in Canada, published in IMMINENT for the first time. Kate has a book of poems, Selvage, which you can find here. As Johanna Drucker describes it, "In Selvage, Siklosi invokes motifs of leaves, stitches, and botanical growth to demonstrate the fecundity of communicative networks."

I had the privilege of working on some of the layouts for Mark Goodwin's recent book, At, now available from Shearsman books. Placement of words on the page are significant in Mark's work, and the process of creating the layouts for some of the poems is an exercise in discovery, as words overlap or juxtapose in different ways, all part of the creation of the poem.

Issues of IMMINENT Issue 10 are now available online from my shop. Thank you for supporting writers and artists to continue to make this zine for the last 5 years.

GroundWork

2024-07-19T16:14:00.003+01:00

GroundWork Gallery, King's Lynn

I'm delighted that IMMINENT zine can now be found in the shop of the GroundWork Gallery in King's Lynn, Norfolk.

Customs House

I spent a very full day in King's Lynn yesterday as part of my work on a project for Art Reach. It was lovely to find the time to pop in to the gallery again, to visit it's evenly lit and beautifully curated space.

GroundWork is dedicated to art and environment, supporting artists and showing work that engages us with the climate crisis and the natural world. I first visited in May and loved the space. It's small, with two floors, but beautifully presented to show contemporary art of a variety of approaches, including a Richard Long wall piece, a sound installation, video of a performance on a beach, and more. I spent some time there exploring the art work and perusing the books and work in the shop.

I'm so happy the gallery recognise the synergy between their mission and my zine, and I'm excited that the work will reach more people.

IMMINENT Issue 9, June 2024

I've visited King's Lynn a few times now for work, and discover something new and wonderful every time. Yesterday I walked along the river in the sun to the Customs House, opposite the GroundWork Gallery. The Customs House is also being used for art exhibitions too currently by local artists, and is just one of the many heritage buildings that you discover in the town if you explore the streets that radiate from the central Tuesday Market Place. If you find yourself in King's Lynn, I encourage you to stop by the GroundWork and explore the ever changing variety of art there. The gallery describes itself as local and global - showing art of a world standard, and also showcasing local artists and supporting artist residencies, connecting art with environmental concerns.

Encircling

2024-06-23T19:31:00.001+01:00

Postcards of drawings to describe the earth, planets, and measuring devices, from 17th and 18th century

As we pass the summer solstice, that time of year when the cycle starts again as the sun reaches its highest point, I think again about stone circles. This is apt, as the new issue of IMMINENT starts with ideas about circles and how people have expressed the natural world using circles for millennia.

Stone circles that may have mapped the heavens, drawings of the movements of the planets and observations of the stars, circles that represent the seasonal cycles and spirals and circles that appear in natural forms, all these have influenced the forthcoming IMMINENT. A large circle connects the contributors too, who are all women that I have been meeting with over the last several months as part of an online eco-poetry group.

Members of the group are based in the United States, England, Canada and Panama. We share our work in progress in a circle of generosity and mutual support, and the exchanges are always exciting, enlightening and innovative. I love the work of all involved and so it seemed imperative for us to make an issue of IMMINENT together.

Issue 9 circles around ideas about nature and how we relate to it. Mary Newell notices the roundness of a wound in a tree. Anna Reckin notes how she encircles spaces where she is honing in on local flora. Chris Turnbull instinctively builds subtle stone circles, and Jennifer Spector considers the movement of the elements stone, wood, water and air in their own migrations. My drawings are reflections on the circular nature of planets and star systems, related on earth by stone circles and devices we make to map the sky. Linda Russo circles around names and naming, then zooms right in to the macro-level of moss.

Issue 9 - circles is at the printers and can be pre-ordered for the usual price of £3 + p&p from my shop page. Thank you for supporting the issue and all the artists and writers who create it.

I encourage you to check out recent work by some of the members:

Chris Turnbull's latest book cipher was published earlier this year by Beautiful Outlaw.

Jennifer Spector is the author of Hithe (Corbel Stone Press, UK 2021) and a recent publication "sand susurran shadow stone cros(sings): a video reflection of places of dwelling" in Chant de la Sirène: Journal of Poetics & the Hybrid Arts.

Linda Russo's new book the verdant is published by Middle Creek.

Emerge

2024-01-20T15:51:00.008+00:00

Following the success of our two performance evenings last year (Time & Tide), artist Saintly Amok and I are planning a new live poetry and performance event in Leicester soon. Based on her meditative practice Mudras, and inspired by poetry from the latest issue of Imminent, we are creating a performance within a space filled with art, responding to the current season as we find ourselves emerging from these darker months. If you would enjoy a calming, meditative and contemplative space for an evening, do join us!

Emerge - Friday 9th February 6:30-7:30pm - Leicester Print Workshop

Imminent 8 - energy

2023-11-27T11:46:00.002+00:00

In the last year I have been grateful to have made contact with artists and poets who are new to me, and have now become part of the Imminent community. Imminent issue 8 is now available, and includes artist Sally Adkins for the first time, as well as Imminent regulars Saintly Amok, Peter Dent, Rupert M Loydell, Andrew Taylor and Chris Turnbull.

Sally Adkins is an artist printmaker based in walking distance of the River Derwent, on the edge of the Peak District in Derbyshire. Her current work explores, through print, the movement of river water, including two images that have been translated from her original etchings into riso prints for Imminent. Sally's work seems perfect for the zine, as she relates them through their titles to poetry, in this instance the work of Alice Oswald.

Sally inspired the conversation that I have aimed to create in the zine between writing and artworks, and led me to read Alice Oswald and write a piece informed by that and the other works in Imminent 8. Tying the works together is the idea of energy, an invisible force which runs through everything, through us and through the elements. Issue 8 explores ways of thinking about energy as a natural force and as an environmental concern.

I have received a few more subscriptions for Imminent in the last few months, and messages from people who have become collectors of the zine, receiving every issue from when I started it in 2020. You can subscribe from my shop page.

You can also browse and buy issues that are still in stock from my Etsy shop.

Thank you for all your support, which helps keep the zine going. It is my labour of love and has built this wonderful community of artists and writers who regularly contribute. I'm also asked more and more to present, talk or perform at events, which I am happy to do, so let me know if you have an event you would like to invite me to!

Time and Tide at SOCK

2023-08-25T17:12:00.004+01:00

Artist Saintly Amok and I have been asked to repeat our performance of Time and Tide at SOCK gallery in Loughborough.

We'll be performing in the SOCK gallery space (which is in Loughborough Town Hall) on Friday 8th September, 7:30-8:30pm.

Time and Tide was devised by Saintly and me as a result of the publication of her woodblock print in Issue 6 of Imminent (the Red Hot issue). Jointly we wrote a piece inspired by the print, which then developed into a performance which we first performed at Leicester Print Workshop in January. In a subtly staged space, we invite an audience to sit between the to and fro of the tide of our words: we will read from the zine across the space, lead a meditation and respond to our audience's marks on paper. Each performance is unique in that it responds to the thoughts of those who attend. We have found the event to generate a calm and beautiful space for reflection.

If you are in the area and looking for an unusual experience, we hope you will join us. Issues of Imminent will be available for sale.

Imminent Special Offers

2023-06-11T22:13:00.001+01:00

It's time to make some space in the store, so I am offering Issues 4, 5 and 6 of IMMINENT for a special price of £10 for all 3, while stocks last.

Issue 4 is the orange issue, held together by ideas of time and landscape: seasonal change, endurance walking, times of day, eons of land formation and climate change.

Issue 5 What the Tide Does is a collaborative issue in blue and yellow. The work is the result of a long distance conversation between me in England and Robert Hogg in Canada, which started in 2021 with swapping poems, books, stories and ideas between us.

Issue 6 is the red hot issue, remembering the heat of the summer months, wild fires and record temperatures, and welcoming the coolness amongst the autumnal colour.

You can order all three copies for £10 + p&p by clicking here.

I'm also offering a gift of my miniature origami to the first 30 orders of Issue 7 (purple). You can order Issue 7 and other individual issues from my new online shop, click here.

Thank you for you support.

Imminent 7 folded

2023-05-13T20:50:00.001+01:00

IMMINENT Issue 7 is folded and creased and being posted to readers.

The very first issue of IMMINENT reflected on the material, including the paper that the zine itself is printed on, as you hold it in your hand. It set the tone for how I have thought about every issue, and with number 7 I'm carrying on exploring thoughts about paper and the link between the conceptual and the tangible.

Thanks to poems by Phil Hall, Deborah Tyler-Bennett, Peter Dent and Mark Goodwin, paper and folding are referenced in different ways. Some of the poems link paper to the natural world and phenomena. I've been playing with folding and origami myself for some time, which I have linked to the gifts of nature and (through the hand-made) the idea of people hand-working with material, bringing one closer to the connection with the material world, which I feel becomes more and more important to sustain. As a result, the first 30 orders of Issue 7 will receive a miniature, hand-folded gift from me.

I've also included a poem by JC Niala that made me think about paper maps, and the relationship between enclosures on the land and colonial map-making. JC has travelled to over 45 countries and lived in 3 continents, gathering stories and performing poetry. Her work Fences is beautifully crafted to consider the cultural differences in thinking about land.

Phil Hall has contributed an extract from his book The Ash Bell, described as a long poem sequence: anthems, letters, journals and aubades; ruminations, cloisters and promises; ogres and custodians.

Mark Goodwin's latest chapbooks are: to 'B' nor as 'tree', published by intergraphia; Of Gone Fox, published by The Hedgehog Poetry Press, and you can read his short essay on poetics and place just published on Briefly Write.

Deborah Tyler-Bennett promotes poetry nights most months at The Needle and Pin in Loughborough, presenting readings by a wide range of poets in a relaxed small venue, which has included me reading from IMMINENT and I hope to do so again.

Peter Dent sends me his work on paper. They arrive in the post, typed and hand-signed, often accompanied by a hand-written letter. Correspondence by Royal Mail is a lovely process when putting together an issue that thinks about paper and the tangible.

As I read the issue page by page, links occur between poems and artworks, and I become aware of the page turning in my hand, and the central fold. I hope you will enjoy the experience too.

You can order IMMINENT Issue 7 from my shop page, and the first 30 orders will receive a hand-folded gift from me. Thank you for your support.

Events imminent

2023-04-23T12:19:00.003+01:00

I'm currently preparing the next Issue of IMMINENT to start posting out in May, which is exciting, and there's some great events by artist friends and poets coming up which could interest you.

Image by Saintly Amok

IMMINENT contributor Saintly Amok is holding a Seed Sankalpa at Primary in Nottingham, on Sunday April 30th. Described as a seed planting workshop and Intention Ritual, the gathering takes inspiration from ceremonies carried out by rural farming communities to honour the land and bless seeds and tools for the coming season of cultivation. I've really enjoyed working with Saintly over the years, and her ritual / meditative workshops are beautifully calming and contemplative experiences. The workshop is free to attend but you need to book. Read more here.

The wonderful Carlisle Poetry Symposium is due to take place on 13th May. This annual event includes free workshops, speakers and poetry readings, open mic and a book table, with a range of poetry books and pamphlets available (including IMMINENT). The Symposium is a generous event, with all sales going directly to the poets to support their work. Read more here.

Do attend an event to support the artists and poets if you can, and if you would like to support IMMINENT you can buy or subscribe on the Shop page at this link.

Thank you.

Of Light: A Celebration of the Poetry of Robert Hogg

2023-04-16T17:05:00.001+01:00


Robert Hogg (Source: Facebook Profile)

Another reading of poetry in memory of poet and scholar Robert Hogg will take place on 27th April at Carleton University, Ottawa, where Robert used to teach. Guest speakers will read poems from Robert’s 56+ year publishing career to celebrate his life and poetry.

Speakers include IMMINENT contributors Chris Turnbull and Phil Hall (Phil's poetry will appear in Issue 7 coming out next month), as well as Jennifer Baker, Natalie Hanna, Rob McLennan and Collet Tracey. Read more about this event and the speakers.

Robert Hogg and I collaborated to make issue 5 of IMMINENT, which was published in his final year, 2022. You can read more about Issue 5 What the Tide Does: Port Mann Bridge in my previous blog post.

One of Robert's colleagues at Carleton, Cameron Anstee, wrote a wonderful post about Robert and his poetry at this link. The final photo of Robert illustrates exactly how I think of him: funny, intelligent, kind and open.

Robert Hogg 1942-2022

2023-02-05T10:29:00.000+00:00

It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Robert Hogg last November.

Robert contributed to Imminent a number of times and we collaborated from a distance to create Issue 5 What the Tide Does: Port Mann Bridge which came out last May.

The issue published Robert's poem that he wrote in 1964 at the beginning of his career, with my images and Afterword created in response to the poem. The issue now seems to contain the sense of the span of his whole career.

I never met Robert in real life, who I knew as Bob. Our correspondence floated between Canada and England, frequent emails which showed Bob to be humorous, generous and stoic. He was always encouraging and championing other poets, as well as genuinely interested in my work. He often asked me about my process and how I formulated ideas, which challenged me to describe in words my visual and often abstract way of thinking.

Phil Hall, who is also an Imminent contributor, has alerted me to an evening of readings on 12th February in memory of Bob Hogg taking place in Vancouver. If you are near that part of the world, please do consider going along.

Thank you, Bob, for all that you did.

An evening of poetry & prose at the Needle & Pin

2023-01-29T10:56:00.000+00:00

I'm delighted to have been invited to read from Imminent at the next Needle and Pin poetry night on Tuesday 7th February at 7pm at Needle and Pin (micro-pub), The Rushes, Loughborough. Hosted by Deborah Tyler-Bennett.

The evening also features poets from the East Midlands anthology Where We Live (by Angela Reddaway, Helen Sadler, Liz Nash and Jill Simpson).

There will be an Open Mic and book table.
So do come along and feel free to pass the date on to your poetry friends.

The poetry night is a regular event at Needle & Pin, organised by Deborah Tylet-Bennett, who is planning more exciting poetry this year including from Andy Croft, North East poet and editor in chief of Smokestack Press.

Time and Tide, Poetry and Place

2023-01-14T18:35:00.001+00:00

I'll be reading at two events in the next few weeks in Leicestershire with some brilliant artists and poets.

Time and Tide will take place on Friday 27th January at Leicester Print Workshop in Leicester's Cultural Quarter.

With Imminent contributor, artist Saintly Amok, we will present a live reading, followed by unfolding conversation exploring the themes of the latest 'Red Hot' issue of the zine, with a focus on the concept of tidal phenomena in the context of climate change.

Saintly Amok's Red Tide print exhibited is in the current LPW members show, and copies of the zine will be available to purchase on the night. You can read more about Red Tide by clicking here.

I have known Saintly (aka Mita Solanky) for years and our work share many interests. We have often walked together in the Charnwood Forest and found new connections in our creative thinking each time. Saintly's work seeks to create a reconnection with 'nature' and the current human condition. In common with my work, her work spans multiple disciplines, drawing from her own personal embodied practices of yoga and meditation and influences from nature-based social and spiritual practice. Mita has an academic background in Particle Physics, and her art practice is a further exploration of understanding the human condition. I have always found her work to be beautifully sensitive to the nature of material, and she is deeply thoughtful and articulate about her concerns.

On Tuesday 7th February from 7pm I'll be at The Needle and Pin in Loughborough, along with poets Deborah Tyler-Bennett and Jill Simpson. There will be poetry readings by me from Imminent, by Deborah, who organises the poetry nights, and from Jill who will be reading from her anthology. The common thread that links Imminent and Jill's work seems to be about place; Jill's anthology is set in Leicestershire with many images of place and ecology, which chimes with themes within Imminent. It will be interesting to see how our readings weave together.

I was delighted when Deborah, who has regularly contributed to Imminent, asked me to take part. Deborah and I have crossed paths many times over many years in various creative projects and it will be great to catch up with her again. Deborah is a brilliant poet and fiction writer, deeply empathetic, with a subtle sense of humour that I love and a very distinctive style. Jill I don't know yet, but as Deborah's choice I'm sure she will be just as interesting and can't wait to meet her!

Both events are free and no need to book. I hope I might see you there.

Imminent 6 red hot

2022-10-30T10:43:00.000+00:00

It's Autumn and Imminent 6 has arrived.

As the seasons turn red, we remember the heat of the summer months, wild fires and record temperatures, and welcome the coolness amongst the autumnal colours. Imminent 6 has a feeling of time passing, colours fading, changing light, and the knowledge embedded within the grains of a piece of wood or in the connections of an ecosystem.

Imminent 6 is printed in red, with images by me and Saintly Amok, and poetry by contributors from both sides of the North Atlantic once again.

Chris Turnbull's notes from recently respond to the lifelong knowledge of a Greek beekeeper. The poems take their own shape, working visually across and between pages as much as through the words. Chris has a fascinating ongoing project, rout/e: poetry found in place, which you can visit at this link.

Rupert M Loydell's An Interpretation Beyond Understanding inspired my own writing. I placed his poem in the centre pages where, in my imagination, it acts as an anchor around which the other pages circle. I thought about the understanding in our own bodies, and wrote a piece with Saintly Amok in response to the way she understood the knowledge contained in her woodblock.

You can read more of Rupert M Loydell's work in 2 free ebooks: Answers That Theory Does Not Allow and From Dipstick Apocalypse. Rupert also edits Stride magazine.

Saintly Amok is holding a sharing knowledge event as part of her residency at New Art Exchange, Nottingham, on 1st December: An Infinite Gift, Seed Sharing Event.

Andrew Taylor and Mark Goodwin close the issue with writing that draws us into the next season but brings with us the memories of what has just gone. Andrew has a new book out with Leafe Press, Northangerland. Mark's latest chapbook, to 'B' nor as 'tree', is just out with intergraphia books.

I hope you enjoy the warmth of this issue.

You can buy red Imminent 6, and past issues, online from the Shop page of this blog. Thank you.

Imminent 5 What the Tide Does

2022-05-15T09:21:00.004+01:00

Imminent 5 is a collaborative issue. The work is the result of a long distance conversation between me in England and Robert Hogg in Canada, which started in 2021 with swapping poems, books, stories and ideas between us. When Robert sent me the poem that inspired this issue, I found that I read it again and again, each time finding more in the words, and it set me off on my own research and lines of thought. All this seemed worthy of creating an issue with just Robert's poem, and my images in response.

The to and fro of our email conversations echo the two and fro of the poem in Imminent 5: Robert Hogg's poem, What the Tide Does - Port Mann Bridge makes the main text of the publication. Inspired by this, and my own research of the Port Mann Bridge over the Fraser River in British Columbia, I created a series of images to accompany the poem, and put them together to create the fifth issue of Imminent.

Robert and I have reflected on the colours of the issue - I chose blue and yellow which, since I made that decision, has come to have another meaning worldwide in the light of the war in Ukraine. The colours were chosen for how they work together visually, and how they overlap to create a third colour, green - which can be achieved using the riso printing technique that I use for the zine. The first page of the poem talks about colours (colors in Robert's spelling! I chose to stay with the authenticity of the Canadian spelling rather than change it to my English), so it felt important that my first decision was about colour. The chosen colours can denote sky, water, sunshine, land - the colours of landscape. Some of my images intentionally bleed sky, water and land together, which, having read about the flooding of the fierce and tidal Fraser River, expresses how I think of it - a living, changing, yet ever constant force that shapes its land and the lives around it. All these ideas, and more, are woven into the issue.

Printed on recycled paper using plant based riso inks, I hope you enjoy the issue, which can be ordered from my shop page. Imminent 5 is selling quickly, so do grab a copy while you can.

Fruit Routes in the Festival of Ideas

2022-05-01T16:29:00.002+01:00

I'm delighted to be making something for Fruit Routes Loughborough again, the artist-led project to create an edible campus at Loughborough University. This year we are celebrating ten years of the project and it's part of the wider Festival of Ideas: Transitions. Details are in the flyer below - I hope some of you can join us.

Any minit

2021-10-09T15:54:00.001+01:00

I wrote to Robert Hogg to let him know that copies of Imminent were on their way to him, over in Canada. He emailed back with a poem, which made me laugh, copied below. (Another of Robert's poems is included in Issue 4 of the zine, which you can order from my shop for only £3).

Imminent 4 is imminent! (for Jo Dacombe

Any minit
in a mint
Altoids are

asteroids
one time
immanent

in Wales
now eminently
imported by

Wrigley
Canada
from who

knows
where
they'll fall

to my tongue so
Curiously Strong
or so it says

on the tin
they could be made
in China or

Timbuktu
or simply fall
from stars

All proceeds from the zine support the printing costs of the next one. There will be more from Robert in future issues that I'm planning, so do sign up for updates or subscribe to make sure you don't miss them.

Thank you for your support for the zine, for poets and artists who contribute, and for caring about the natural world.

Imminent 4

2021-09-25T16:48:00.003+01:00

IMMINENT issue 4 arrives for October, printed in a peachy orange as the autumnal colours begin to appear.

The orange issue is held together by ideas of time and landscape: seasonal change, endurance walking, times of day, eons of land formation and climate change. Visit my blog shop to order or subscribe.

The poets included also have publications out currently, so you can visit more of their work at the links below.

Phil Hall's latest chapbook, The Ogre, is by Trainwreck Press, and features Phil's artwork assemblages on the cover, which I find intriguing.

Robert Hogg's chapbook, A Quiet Affair Vancouver '63, also by Trainwreck Press, and of which I have a copy. The poem has a sense of time as the narrative unfolds gradually, and is set in the past with a photo of a very young Bob Hogg on the cover. I'm delighted to be working with Bob on a collaborative piece for a future IMMINENT.

Gerrie Fellows has a poem that appears for The Hunterian and you can read it online.

And my good friend Mark Goodwin's first chapbook to be published in North America is Erodes on Air, where "we are invited into a landscape of stone and snow warmed through with wit
and Goodwin’s singular eye for the world and ear for its song", by Middle Creek Publishing.

IMMINENT 4 also includes artworks by Helen Goodwin, Peter Griffiths and me.

You can order a copy from my blog shop, or subscribe to two issues per year, only £8.80 including p&p.

Thank you for your support.

Imminent 1, 2, 3

2021-07-04T19:34:00.001+01:00

IMMINENT is the little zine I started in March 2020 as a response to concerns about nature and the environment. Numerous excellent artists and writers have contributed to date, and their generosity has kept my creative brain moving, for which I am most grateful.

Making the zine has become a process of reciprocity. Artists and poets have sent me their words and images, and gradually, as I sift through these wonderful gifts, themes and threads have emerged. I take these threads and respond to them with my own words and images, and eventually curate it all together into a small collection of creativity, woven together and presented in one dominant colour (the colour also suggested by the content) in a riso printed booklet.

I have loved making it, and loved the new connections it has enabled me to make with other artists and writers, many of whom I have only corresponded with and never met. I hope I will meet them all one day.

I would love you to have the zine, and so I have made it as affordable as possible. The cost only covers the printing and distribution, the rest is made by generous creativity and the love of sharing. I hope you enjoy it.

Red - Issue 1 - the material world

Blue - Issue 2 - ice and water

Green - Issue 3 - the other-than-human

forthcoming is:

Orange - Issue 4 - landscape and time

I am also working on a collaboration with Robert Hogg from Canada, inspired by a poem he sent me. The zine is being created as a result of our correspondence between Canada and England, and will span time and distance, memory, imagining and journeys.

There are a few copies of Issues 1 and 2 left. You can purchase Issues 1-3 for £7+p&p or individual issues for £3+p&p.

Read past posts of this blog to find out more about each issue.

Thank you for reading.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SHOP PAGE TO ORDER

Imminent green (Issue 3)

2021-04-23T16:00:00.002+01:00

The Imminent green issue gives thought to wildness - not the remote kind of wild of the wilderness, but the everyday wildness that is all around us and bumps up against our domestic lives. Industrialisation has brought us to where we are, exploiting all that nature has to offer, and the issue considers the notion of slowing down, and how to re-wild whilst acknowledging that we cannot turn back time. Poetry by Deborah Tyler-Bennett reflects on the impact of our first childhood encounters with wild creatures; Gerrie Fellows wonders at the objects that creatures leave behind; Mita Solanky retires an industrial wheel from its place of work and returns it to nature. With other contributions from Penelope Shuttle, Carole Miles, Andy Postlethwaite, Chris Turnbull and me, Jo Dacombe, we hope you enjoy the May issue of Imminent green.

You can order the green issue below, or click subscribe for an annual subscription of two Imminent issues per year.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SHOP PAGE TO ORDER

Ice Flows

2020-11-28T09:00:00.002+00:00

Ice Melting, Jo Dacombe, 2020

In producing IMMINENT, my zine of contemporary art and poetry in response to environment, I feel that I am in collaboration with other artists and poets. The work that they submit I then curate in a way that creates a flow between each item, a forwards and backwards flow, with one item feeding another. I also create my own work, which is often a direct response to theirs.

In Issue 1 I wrote about the material, and I often think about the meaning of material, the stuff in the world that we make things out of and that we touch with our hands. The images published in Issue 2 were important in their use of material, either in the way that the images were made through material processes, or through their reference to water, which then further inspired my own thinking and the work that I produced to tie the collection together.

Mary Hayes’ work, Ice Cold, was created using a solar plate printing method from an image of the surface of a rusty iron sculpture by Richard Serra. This image reminded Mary of ice floes that she had seen in Iceland, and the rising sea levels due to global warming melting the ice. I loved the idea that the image had been created from an iron surface degraded by water which then became an image redolent of ice melting, thus turning back to water.

Mita Solanky’s work, we all breathe the same sky, is a chemigram, made using household chemicals on photographic paper. Through this process she felt that the work referenced the crises we are facing in having polluted our environment for so long.

Helen Goodwin's image is a photograph entitled Shadowed Edge - Skipsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, where I once owned a small wooden chalet now lost to the sea. The photographed shadow on the shore tells the tale of that which was once there but disappeared with the movement of water.

I have been making microscopic photographs for a while now, in an exploration of material but also of things we cannot see with the naked eye. In response to Helens' image, I photographed watercolour paint on textured paper through a microscope, with a result that reminded me of a coastline, and referenced back to something I had written about in my book Imagining Woodlands about what happens when coastlines are viewed at different scales. A sense of scale, as well as time (time is also referenced in Helen's image) are both themes that are significant in climate change.

Ice Melting, Jo Dacombe, 2020

My own image, Ice Melting, (I'm showing two of the original images in this post) was made in response to the collection of poems and images represented in the zine, with those emergent ideas of water moving and transforming. I froze a block of ice and then photographed it as it gently melted over a day. Close-up again, the images are like landscapes or glaciers. My chosen image was then transformed again by the blue riso print process for the zine, which softened the image and gave it back the glow of blue that I wrote about in the glacier piece.

I have found the making of the zine a wonderful process, exploring my own ideas but also responding to the ideas of others. I haven't reproduced the work of the other artists here (to do so would not respect their copyright), but you can see the images I've written about in the current issue of the zine.

Click here to find out more about Issue 2 and to order a copy.

Imminent Issue 2

2020-11-15T15:06:00.002+00:00

Issue 2 of Imminent is now available - my little zine of contemporary art and poetry.

Lockdown 2 caused Imminent 2 to be delayed - just like Imminent 1 - but only by a couple of weeks this time, rather than months! This was a relief as the recent sense of seasonable change is the perfect time to launch the new issue.

As the first frosts appeared and the wind strengthened, throwing rain at my window and flipping my letterbox flap, I grew impatient about the delay, knowing that the November Imminent heralded the coming of winter - beautiful poetry by Penelope Shuttle, Jim Caruth, Peter Dent and Rupert M Loydell, speaking of rain, snow, time and blue - I felt that this issue needed to be read within this span. Inspired by the poetry, and fluid images by Helen Goodwin, Mita Solanky and Mary Hayes, I wrote a piece about ice and water moving across the world. Water and ice is changing our planet and it's something I've been making work about recently, with my ongoing series of Future drawings - perhaps some of this will appear in a future issue.

How fitting too that the first issue opens with a poem by the wonderful Debroah Tyler-Bennett, A Charm for a Lockdown. This issue is timely and, I hope, will bring a little beauty to help you get through the darker months.

Issue 2 can be ordered below. Includes contributions from Jim Caruth, Jo Dacombe, Peter Dent, Helen Goodwin, Mary Hayes, Rupert M Loydell, Penelope Shuttle, Mita Solanky, Deborah Tyler-Bennett.

Imminent Zine
Issue 2 November 2020
A5 12 pages
£2 + p&p

Riso printed with plant based inks on recycled paper

(p&p is for UK only, if you are outside of the UK please contact me)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SHOP PAGE TO ORDER

Imagining Woodlands book

2020-09-11T20:33:00.010+01:00

I am delighted to announce that the long awaited Imagining Woodlands book is now available.

Imagining Woodlands is a collection of short essays as a culmination of a 2 year project exploring human perceptions of woodlands.

In 2019, I created an exhibition of pages from my sketchbook of experimental images I had been making for the project. Once up on the wall, I realised that the images needed to be seen in a different way. They needed a more intimate experience, perhaps to be held in the hand by its audience. I also felt I had stories to tell, and so a book format seemed the best way to make this happen.

And so I have created this book. The book reflects on my work with palynologist and archaeologist Dr Suzi Richer and literature researcher Dr Freya Sierhuis to discover cross disciplinary perceptions of woods and forests. The text also reflects on my thoughts and memories of woodlands, and includes my re-telling of two folk tales and images of the woodland experiments from my sketchbook. It also includes a generously contributed essay by Dr Sierhuis.

The book can be pre-ordered below and will be posted out in about 2 weeks time. Thank you for your support.

Imagining Woodlands
23cm x 15cm
92 pages including 26 full colour images

Imminent

2020-06-16T18:50:00.011+01:00

I am delighted to announce the launch of Imminent, a new zine publication that I have produced, now available.

Imminent is a collection of words and images by contemporary creative writers and artists around the UK. I invited creative people who I know and who I know are wonderful to contribute to this new venture with me, to create a small periodical of responses to our current environmental context.

In editing Issue 1, I discovered thematic groupings emerging from the generous contributions from artists and writers. Their interests have developed my own, so I have written an introductory piece that sets the scene for the first issue, on the physicality of material.

The zine will not exist online, because it needs to be a material thing. I believe that the experience of holding something in your hand that is tangible and has been produced from the world, and considering how that thing came to be, as well as our relationship with it, is part of the environmental connection that we need to renew in our current times.

Imminent has been produced in the most environmentally way that I could, using recycled paper and plant based inks, printed through a riso printer running on sustainable energy sources.

I hope you will enjoy this new zine, which I aim to produce twice per year. The proceeds from the zine will go back to covering the cost of the next issue, so please consider supporting this and the wonderful artists and writers who have contributed.

If you would like the first issue, you can buy it through PayPal using the Buy Now button below (you do not have to have a PayPal account).

If you would like to join the mailing list to be alerted when subsequent issues become available, please sign up here.

Thank you.

Issue 1 includes contributions from Linzi Bright, Jim Caruth, Jo Dacombe, Mark Goodwin, Mary Hayes and Andy Postlethwaite.

Imminent Zine
Issue 1 June 2020
A5 12 pages
£2 + p&p

(p&p is for UK only, if you are outside of the UK please contact me)

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SHOP PAGE TO ORDER