A new collaboration between poet Kevin Crossley-Holland and artist Rosamond Ulph invites readers to pause, reflect, and delight in the wonder of words and the turning of the year.
A celebration of the word, and of the season when ‘everything seems miraculous’, Spring is an exquisitely produced limited edition of 200 copies, each hand numbered and signed.
Light-hearted verses by Kevin Crossley-Holland. Illustrations by Rosamond Ulph.
Printed in Great Britain by Peter Newble, this finely crafted book is beautifully typeset in 16- on 21-point ITC Golden Cockerel. Its pages have been produced on 150gsm Munken Design Pure Rough Cream paper, supplied by Denmaur Independent Papers of Sittingbourne, Kent, and hand-bound by Essex Bookbinders.
Kevin Crossley-Holland is a well-known poet, translator, librettist and novelist for children. His Collected Poems will be published later this year.
Rosamond Ulph is a painter, printmaker, calligrapher and botanical illustrator. Her work has been hung at the Royal Academy summer exhibition.
Order at www.kevincrossley-holland.com/shop
Dear Kevin Crossley-Holland
I am writing, most belatedly, to thank you for sending me two books of poetry and a two page letter in response to two folders of poetry by a 14 year old me, you at Macmillans, in 1968.
Having warmly criticised me for overuse of the words ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ your choice of books intentionally presented me with two very different paths ahead: Underneath The Water by Charles Causley and Night Of Stones by George MacBeth, each of which I recently again received first editions of. The latter led me to writing in a ‘stream of consciousness’ style, the former to a life in song after I set By St Thomas Water and The Question to music.
I have remained grateful to you all these years and am glad to finally tell you so.
Unfortunately, aged 22, in a pathetic impersonation of Thomas Aquinas, I thought myself far beyond those folders and, regretfully, saw fit to drop them into a black plastic bag. All I remember are the opening words of the first poem titled A Peace Of Fantasy …
Cast your mind into a world
where peace prevails all,
where wind whistles through the branch
and the trees sing with a gust.
Thank you always.
With respect and warmest wishes
Martin Newman