The Bonniest Companie

 ‘I watched nineteen deer

Pour from ridge to glen floor

 Where they stopped,

 And turned to stare

 the foremost with a queenly air

as though to say ‘Aren’t we

 The bonniest companie?…’

 Artwork for ‘The Bonniest Companie’, a new collection of poems by Kathleen Jamie. The exerpt is from ‘The Hinds‘ one of the fifty or so poems that feature in the book.

As a lay person, I have always been in awe of how a poet creates a whole world with words, and that’s just in one poem. So when Kathleen Jamie and Picador commissioned an artwork to go on the cover of a whole collection of poems I was rather doubtful as to how I could possibly achieve this. Perhaps this is what led to the creation of the most complex print I have done to date. Two drypoint plates and approximately fifty layers of chine colle…I think! And every moment was a pleasure. So thank you to Kathleen and Picador for a new challenge, and also a big thank you to Roger Cuthbert for the photography and in-house digital services.

The book will be out in hardback, in November, published by Picador.

http://www.picador.com/books/the-bonniest-companie

http://www.kathleenjamie.com/the-bonniest-companie/

It is available for pre-order on Amazon but much better to place an order at one’s local bookshop instead, if you still have one!

Advertisement