If you're in the area of Inverewe Garden, Poolewe, near Gairloch, please come to the launch of 'Trees Meet Sea', an exhibition of my poems paired with artworks by Lynn Bennett-Mackenzie, Ann Coomber, Dorje Khandro Dawid, Helen Denerley, Chris Goodman, Lotte Glob, James Hawkins, Jan Kilpatrick, Kirsty O’Connor, Bill Ritchie, David Sandum, Fergus Stewart, Kathy Sutherland and Peter White. They encompass video, painting, etching, sculpture, textiles and ceramics. Each artwork is a response to or has been responded to with one of my poems and they're available in a lovely, full-colour booklet here.
Poets don’t normally get to have exhibitions, so this is hugely exciting for me, and I’m thrilled that we’re able to bring this rich mixture of art together in dialogue with my poetry. I live where trees meet sea and it’s a place of immense creative energy.
The exhibition was due to open in April 2020, but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While many exhibitions went on-line, we decided that a virtual version could not do justice to the multi-media richness of this particular combination of artworks and poetry. We have just had to be patient until the garden re-opened and the exhibition is well worth waiting for - it is full of texture, as well as text. By putting poems in paired conversation with visual artworks, there’s a sense of motion, back and forth, as feelings and ideas ebb and flow between words and images, making their way from letters to clay, thread, paint and pixel, and back again. You’ll need to be in the room with it to get its full effect.
The exhibition was conceived through a residency at the National Trust’s Inverewe Garden, and is part of my wider Liminal Zone project supported by Creative Scotland, exploring the seashore as a metaphor for interfaces and boundaries in our lives. It will launch at the Sawyer Gallery at Inverewe Garden, Poolewe, near Gairloch, on Monday 11 April 2022, 2-4pm, and will show there until 31 May, when it will transfer to Dundee Botanic Garden. Please come, either to the launch event, or to see it later.
If you can't see it in person you can still enjoy the art in an elegant pamphlet designed by Gerry Cambridge, available postage free and signed from the shop here.
