BOOKS

This is the second publication by the Aldeburgh Arts Club Artists’ Collective, our previous book was called 'Look Out Locked In.’ The idea for this book came from a conversation some of the Aldeburgh Arts Club members had during one of our Zoom meetings as we continued through the second national lockdown. I threw in the word Hope and how important it was for us to stay positive and continue as artists to create. What bounced back from Caroline Way was that Hope was the last thing that remained in Pandora’s box. And from there we started discussing what was in the box and the mythology surrounding it, wondering why it was always the women’s fault and why the contents of the box had to be negative, and Mireille came up with the idea of re-visiting the myth of Pandora in a more positive way and creating artworks that reversed this myth. And so a new project began and over the last nine months we have continued to have lively discussions, to discuss hope and renewal, and to cultivate creatively a positive outlook. The topics I chose were Trees, Birds, Water, Change, Hope and Heritage. All essential to our well-being as humans living on this extraordinarily beautiful, rich and diverse shared planet. It will culminate in an exhibition of some of the artwork produced, at the Aldeburgh South Lookout Tower in August 2021. Price £10.00 (plus postage and packing).

Look Out Locked In' is a beautifully illustrated A5 book of artworks with 119 colour pages. It is a collaboration between sixteen members of the Aldeburgh Arts Club luncheon group. Artists, poets, writers, bookmakers, potters, herbologist and makers, who came together in the spring of 2020 on zoom. They were set a subject matter for a period of eight weeks in which they could express in whatever creative form they might be inspired to use, story, photography, painting,drawing, journaling,poetry, exploring what it feels like to be in Lockdown and self isolating during this strangest of times.
A limited edition of 90. Price £10.00 (plus postage and packing).

A sense of place has always been crucial to my writing. I was born in Pakefield, Suffolk, a coastal village at the southern end of the then thriving fishing port of Lowestoft - Norse names and on-shore fisher folk - in a house as close to the sea as could be, on a marly, sandy shifting cliffside, which is now a slope of a walk, to a shingle shift, seakale and no fisherfolk in sight, of the ever raging sometime calm, pigeon blue grey, chilly north sea.
My earliest memory is of the sun rising from an unusually calm blue summer's dead calm sea, my playground one of light, air and pebbles, the shingles shifting sound, ozone and bird call and salty seawater stinging and stimulating, or buoyant, uplfiting, when immersed in it's sandy softness. An unsure, on shore sort of world, certainly one of beauty. Water, nature, art, love and loss, family, to immerse within, to contemplate, to be balmed by - and that which still informs my writing. Kneeling In Dust was published 15th October 2020.
Price £8.00 plus postage and packing
Click here to listen to Gillie performing 'Kneeling In Dust'
Click here to listen to Gillie performing 'Restaurante Avero Porto'

Valerie Denton has been writing poetry for most of her life and has performed her poems at festivals, concerts and book launches. Much of her writing stems from meditation (TM) and from her interest in dance and music. She has worked as a creative writing tutor in adult education, which led to anthologies being produced. she also enjoys choral singing and is a member of a local choir.she has been a member of an African drumming group in Rendlesham, Suffolk. Peace Rose her latest poetry book was published August 2020 and is now available to order.
Price £8.00 (plus postage and packing)

Click here to listen to Valerie performing New Grange
Click here to listen to Valerie performing Peace Rose

Enough to Love a Multitude is Peter Watkins first published collection of poems. Many of his poetic motifs in the collection arise from the gentle landscape & slow rivers of Suffolk in which he finds divinity, solace, and inspiration. This collection is both personal & universal in its exploration of the vicissitudes of life and the soul’s journey through the archetypal dark wood.
It is about the consolation & redemption to be found in nature. Above all it is an invocation of love.
Price £10.00 (plus postage and packing)

click here to listen to Peter performing Enough To Love A Multitude
click here to listen to Peter performing Blue Iris

The poems and paintings in this collection are a testament to Dave Martin’s profound and long lasting attachment to the coastal path of Pembrokeshire.
£10.00 (plus postage and packing)

Extract from SPS 12 Rivers magazine- review by Pat Jourdan
This is the voice of someone endlessly searching for a spirtual fulfilment, and looking for
clues and significance in the certainty of those rocks. The liminal, mystical floats over the precise scientific names of the rocks, era by era of geological time....Pre Cambrian, Ordovician and Silurian worlds. Dave Martin's task is to knit the two - like sky and soil together. Each poem shows a different approach which he likens to a pilgrimage.
He is seeking a deeper spiritual meaning in poem after poem with the working of a deeper symmetry and sees Wales itself at the horizon of time/where the birth of myth meets/The jagged thrust of rock.
Price £10.00 (plus postage and packing)

'Conversations With Birds', my first collection of poetry grew out of my writing the title poem of that name and the realisation that birds featured in so much of my writing that they were a unifying factor and deserved to be gathered together.
What is it about birds that they lend so much to poetic expression? What do they represent to us, freedom, spirituality, a direct connection to the natural world?
As a child I was obsessed with birds, I knew their haunts, their flights, their calls. I had no doubt that at some level beyond language I had direct connection with them so when my grandfather with whom I had a very close relationship passed away I did not doubt that when a jackdaw perched on my shoulder as I waited for the school bus this was his way of saying goodbye. We live through our minds and what is real to them guides much of our life and need not be the same as or in conflict with the physical world. They are two of what may be many realities that can coexist and for me the poems in 'Conversations With Birds' are where they can come together.
Price £8.00 (plus postge and packing)

click here to listen to Ian performing Siren Song