Spectral Pegasus / Dark Movements - Softcover

Beam, Jeffery

Softcover

ISBN 10: 099892931X ISBN 13: 9780998929316

Publisher: Kin Press, 2019

Synopsis

An intense “marvelous and fateful game,” Spectral Pegasus / Dark Movements brings to the page a six-month blogosphere collaboration between Welsh painter Clive Hicks-Jenkins and American poet Jeffery Beam, depicting a Hero’s journey through death, resurrection, psychological and spiritual trials, and revelations into redemptive vision. Originating loosely in an ancient Welsh folk tradition and the death of the painter’s father, painter and poet marry their impressive powers of myth and dream into individual but sympathetically resonant designs—inward landscapes wrought startlingly real—at turns plain and flamboyant, poignant and joyful. “The grace of these paintings and poems is in their wildness,” fashioned ultimately by Hicks-Jenkins’ and Beam’s compassionate confrontation with dark forces, reviving forgotten knowing and healing powers, as pilgrim/hero meets Horse/Man, thus “patching up some almighty fear in the fabric of heaven” and the searching self. Features twenty-one full color illustrations, sixteen poems, and illuminating essays by Sarah Parvin, Mary-Ann Constantine, and Claire Pickard. Book design by J.C. Mlozanowski.

About this title

About the Authors

In Clive Hicks-Jenkins' early career he was an actor, choreographer, director, and stage designer, creating productions with leading companies in London. He moved back to Wales permanently in the late 1980's to concentrate on his work as an artist. The actor Simon Callow has called him "one of the most individual and complete artists of our time" and Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as "reflective, expressive painting of the highest order." His paintings, prints and artists' books are in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Wales, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art Machynlleth, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Llandaff Cathedral, Pallant House Gallery, and the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Art, as well as private collections around the world. His artist's books, including the first illustrated edition of Peter Shaffer's Equus, are in libraries worldwide. Clive was winner of the Gulbenkian Welsh Art Prize in 1999, runner-up as Welsh Artist of the Year in April 2000, and in 2002 received a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales. He is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University School of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Martin Tinney Gallery, Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Brecknock Museum, the Museum of Modern Art Wales, and Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford. In 2011, his work was celebrated in a hugely successful retrospective at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. His latest exhibition featured a limited edition series of 14 screenprints, and supplemental paintings and drawings, on the theme Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These screenprints have been reproduced in a new edition of Simon Armitage's translation of the poem (Faber & Faber, 2018) which served as inspiration for the series. 2016 saw the publication of his first illustrated book Hansel and Gretel (Random Spectacular). In 2018 Goldfield Productions' Hansel and Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes, inspired by Clive's images and under his direction and design supervision, toured England to great acclaim. [Composer Matthew Kaner, poet Simon Armitage, and a team of visual and puppetry artists.] Armitage's retelling of the tale with Clive's illustrations was published by Design For Today in the autumn of 2018. In Spring 2019, the Berkley Ensemble will be presenting the first public concert performances of The Mare's Tale by composer Mark Bowden and librettist poet Damian Walford Davies, across England, Wales and Scotland. Clive-Jenkins has been praised by critics in The Independent, Modern Painters, Art Review, Galleries, The New Welsh Review, Planet, and the BBC Wales series Double Yellow. His work has also been selected for several prestigious group exhibitions, including the Royal Academy. The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Carolina Wren Press) and the noteworthy monograph Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Lund Humphries) were both published by in 2011. www.hicks-jenkins.com AND clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com

Jeffery Beam's many award-winning works include The Broken Flower (Skysill Press, England), Gospel Earth (Skysill Press, England), Visions of Dame Kind (The Jargon Society), An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold (Horse & Buggy), The New Beautiful Tendons: Collected Queer Poems 1969-2012 (Spuyten Duyvil-Triton), Light and Shadow (Aperture), and The Fountain (NC Wesleyan College Press). His spoken word CD with multimedia What We Have Lost: New and Selected Poems 1977-2001 was a 2003 Audio Publishers Award finalist. Beam's latest works are Jonathan Williams: The Lord of Orchards (co-edited with Richard Owens, Prospecta Press, 2018), and a virtual chapbook Don't Forget Love (Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, 2018, dispatchespoetrywars.com/virtual-chapbooks/2018/04/ dont-forget-love-by-jeffrey-beam). The song cycle, Life of the Bee (composer Lee Hoiby) continues to be performed on the international stage and can be heard, along with a Beam reading of the texts, on Albany Record's New Growth, a recording of the Carnegie Hall premiere. Limited fine editions include An Invocation (Country Valley Press), On Hounded Ground: Home and the Creative Life (Bookgirl Press, Japan), MountSeaEden (Chester Creek Press), and Eno Crow (Horse & Buggy Press). A number of young composers have worked and are working with his poetry. Steven Serpa premiered the cantata Heaven's Birds: Lament and Song (based on three New Beautiful Tendons poems) on Boston's World AIDS Day 2008. His tone poem An Invocation premiered for string quartet in 2014 (Spartanburg, SC) and in 2016 as a symphonic piece (Austin Symphony). Serpa premiered The Creatures: A Bestiary Retold (Austin, 2016) and also plans a song cycle of gay love poems. Holt McCarley premiered an instrumental piece, The Hyena, from the Bestiary (St. Louis, 2015) and is working on two cycles based on Beam nature and love poems. 2015 also saw the premier of a Daniel Thomas Davis chamber opera Kith & Kin: Seven Portraits with song texts by several North Carolina writers, including Beam (restaged with North Carolina Opera premier in 2018). Tony Solitro's song Love's Astronomy was completed in August 2018 and by the time of this printing will have had its first performance. Forthcoming is Beam's first of several projected children's books The Droods with British artist Phil Cooper. Other projects include Bee, I'm Expecting You (bee poem anthology), and Blue Darter - Jonathan Williams: A Bibliography of the Publications and Ephemera, 1950-2008. He continues to work on the poetry collection Life of the Bee; Bee, I'm Expecting You-an anthology of bee poems, facts, and folklore through the ages; and They Say: A Commonplace Book on Poetry and the Spirit. Beam's poems and criticism have appeared in many anthologies and magazines. Poetry editor emeritus of the print and online literary journal Oyster Boy Review, Beam retired in late 2011 from many decades as a UNC-Chapel Hill botanical librarian. Born in Kannapolis, North Carolina he lives in Hillsborough with his husband of 39 years, Stanley Finch. You can learn more about, read and hear more of his poetry at his website: www.jefferybeam.com

In Clive Hicks-Jenkins' early career he was an actor, choreographer, director, and stage designer, creating productions with leading companies in London. He moved back to Wales permanently in the late 1980's to concentrate on his work as an artist. The actor Simon Callow has called him "one of the most individual and complete artists of our time" and Nicholas Usherwood in Galleries has described his work as "reflective, expressive painting of the highest order." His paintings, prints and artists' books are in numerous public collections, including the National Museum of Wales, the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art Machynlleth, the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Llandaff Cathedral, Pallant House Gallery, and the Methodist Church Collection of Modern Art, as well as private collections around the world. His artist's books, including the first illustrated edition of Peter Shaffer's Equus, are in libraries worldwide. Clive was winner of the Gulbenkian Welsh Art Prize in 1999, runner-up as Welsh Artist of the Year in April 2000, and in 2002 received a Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales. He is a Royal Cambrian Academician and an Honorary Fellow of Aberystwyth University School of Art. He has had solo exhibitions at Martin Tinney Gallery, Newport Museum & Art Gallery, Brecknock Museum, the Museum of Modern Art Wales, and Christ Church Picture Gallery in Oxford. In 2011, his work was celebrated in a hugely successful retrospective at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. His latest exhibition featured a limited edition series of 14 screenprints, and supplemental paintings and drawings, on the theme Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These screenprints have been reproduced in a new edition of Simon Armitage's translation of the poem (Faber & Faber, 2018) which served as inspiration for the series. 2016 saw the publication of his first illustrated book Hansel and Gretel (Random Spectacular). In 2018 Goldfield Productions' Hansel and Gretel: A Nightmare in Eight Scenes, inspired by Clive's images and under his direction and design supervision, toured England to great acclaim. [Composer Matthew Kaner, poet Simon Armitage, and a team of visual and puppetry artists.] Armitage's retelling of the tale with Clive's illustrations was published by Design For Today in the autumn of 2018. In Spring 2019, the Berkley Ensemble will be presenting the first public concert performances of The Mare's Tale by composer Mark Bowden and librettist poet Damian Walford Davies, across England, Wales and Scotland. Clive-Jenkins has been praised by critics in The Independent, Modern Painters, Art Review, Galleries, The New Welsh Review, Planet, and the BBC Wales series Double Yellow. His work has also been selected for several prestigious group exhibitions, including the Royal Academy. The Book of Ystwyth: Six Poets on the Art of Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Carolina Wren Press) and the noteworthy monograph Clive Hicks-Jenkins (Lund Humphries) were both published by in 2011. www.hicks-jenkins.com AND clivehicksjenkins.wordpress.com

Edition details

• Publisher: Kin Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 099892931X
• ISBN 13: 9780998929316
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 92