Robert Hogg 1942-2022

It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Robert Hogg last November.

Robert contributed to Imminent a number of times and we collaborated from a distance to create Issue 5 What the Tide Does: Port Mann Bridge which came out last May.

The issue published Robert's poem that he wrote in 1964 at the beginning of his career, with my images and Afterword created in response to the poem. The issue now seems to contain the sense of the span of his whole career.

I never met Robert in real life, who I knew as Bob. Our correspondence floated between Canada and England, frequent emails which showed Bob to be humorous, generous and stoic. He was always encouraging and championing other poets, as well as genuinely interested in my work. He often asked me about my process and how I formulated ideas, which challenged me to describe in words my visual and often abstract way of thinking.

Phil Hall, who is also an Imminent contributor, has alerted me to an evening of readings on 12th February in memory of Bob Hogg taking place in Vancouver. If you are near that part of the world, please do consider going along.

Thank you, Bob, for all that you did.

 

An evening of poetry & prose at the Needle & Pin

I'm delighted to have been invited to read from Imminent at the next Needle and Pin poetry night on Tuesday 7th February at 7pm at Needle and Pin (micro-pub), The Rushes, Loughborough.  Hosted by Deborah Tyler-Bennett.

The evening also features poets from the East Midlands anthology Where We Live (by Angela Reddaway, Helen Sadler, Liz Nash and Jill Simpson).

There will be an Open Mic and book table.
So do come along and feel free to pass the date on to your poetry friends.

The poetry night is a regular event at Needle & Pin, organised by Deborah Tylet-Bennett, who is planning more exciting poetry this year including from Andy Croft, North East poet and editor in chief of Smokestack Press.

Time and Tide, Poetry and Place

 I'll be reading at two events in the next few weeks in Leicestershire with some brilliant artists and poets.

Time and Tide will take place on Friday 27th January at Leicester Print Workshop in Leicester's Cultural Quarter.

With Imminent contributor, artist Saintly Amok, we will present a live reading, followed by unfolding conversation exploring the themes of the latest 'Red Hot' issue of the zine, with a focus on the concept of tidal phenomena in the context of climate change. 

Saintly Amok's Red Tide print exhibited is in the current LPW members show, and copies of the zine will be available to purchase on the night. You can read more about Red Tide by clicking here.

I have known Saintly (aka Mita Solanky) for years and our work share many interests. We have often walked together in the Charnwood Forest and found new connections in our creative thinking each time. Saintly's work seeks to create a reconnection with 'nature' and the current human condition. In common with my work, her work spans multiple disciplines, drawing from her own personal embodied practices of yoga and meditation and influences from nature-based social and spiritual practice. Mita has an academic background in Particle Physics, and her art practice is a further exploration of understanding the human condition. I have always found her work to be beautifully sensitive to the nature of material, and she is deeply thoughtful and articulate about her concerns.

On Tuesday 7th February from 7pm I'll be at The Needle and Pin in Loughborough, along with poets Deborah Tyler-Bennett and Jill Simpson. There will be poetry readings by me from Imminent, by Deborah, who organises the poetry nights, and from Jill who will be reading from her anthology. The common thread that links Imminent and Jill's work seems to be about place; Jill's anthology is set in Leicestershire with many images of place and ecology, which chimes with themes within Imminent.  It will be interesting to see how our readings weave together. 

I was delighted when Deborah, who has regularly contributed to Imminent, asked me to take part. Deborah and I have crossed paths many times over many years in various creative projects and it will be great to catch up with her again. Deborah is a brilliant poet and fiction writer, deeply empathetic, with a subtle sense of humour that I love and a very distinctive style. Jill I don't know yet, but as Deborah's choice I'm sure she will be just as interesting and can't wait to meet her!

Both events are free and no need to book. I hope I might see you there.

 

Imminent 6 red hot

It's Autumn and Imminent 6 has arrived.

As the seasons turn red, we remember the heat of the summer months, wild fires and record temperatures, and welcome the coolness amongst the autumnal colours. Imminent 6 has a feeling of time passing, colours fading, changing light, and the knowledge embedded within the grains of a piece of wood or in the connections of an ecosystem.

Imminent 6 is printed in red, with images by me and Saintly Amok, and poetry by contributors from both sides of the North Atlantic once again.

 

Chris Turnbull's notes from recently respond to the lifelong knowledge of a Greek beekeeper. The poems take their own shape, working visually across and between pages as much as through the words. Chris has a fascinating ongoing project, rout/e: poetry found in place, which you can visit at this link.

Rupert M Loydell's An Interpretation Beyond Understanding inspired my own writing. I placed his poem in the centre pages where, in my imagination, it acts as an anchor around which the other pages circle. I thought about the understanding in our own bodies, and wrote a piece with Saintly Amok in response to the way she understood the knowledge contained in her woodblock. 

You can read more of Rupert M Loydell's work in 2 free ebooks: Answers That Theory Does Not Allow and From Dipstick Apocalypse. Rupert also edits Stride magazine. 

Saintly Amok is holding a sharing knowledge event as part of her residency at New Art Exchange, Nottingham, on 1st December: An Infinite Gift, Seed Sharing Event.

Andrew Taylor and Mark Goodwin close the issue with writing that draws us into the next season but brings with us the memories of what has just gone. Andrew has a new book out with Leafe Press, Northangerland. Mark's latest chapbook, to 'B' nor as 'tree', is just out with intergraphia books.

I hope you enjoy the warmth of this issue.

You can buy red Imminent 6, and past issues, online from the Shop page of this blog. Thank you.

Imminent 5 What the Tide Does

Imminent 5 is a collaborative issue. The work is the result of a long distance conversation between me in England and Robert Hogg in Canada, which started in 2021 with swapping poems, books, stories and ideas between us. When Robert sent me the poem that inspired this issue, I found that I read it again and again, each time finding more in the words, and it set me off on my own research and lines of thought. All this seemed worthy of creating an issue with just Robert's poem, and my images in response.

The to and fro of our email conversations echo the two and fro of the poem in Imminent 5:  Robert Hogg's poem, What the Tide Does - Port Mann Bridge makes the main text of the publication. Inspired by this, and my own research of the Port Mann Bridge over the Fraser River in British Columbia, I created a series of images to accompany the poem, and put them together to create the fifth issue of Imminent.

 

Robert and I have reflected on the colours of the issue - I chose blue and yellow which, since I made that decision, has come to have another meaning worldwide in the light of the war in Ukraine. The colours were chosen for how they work together visually, and how they overlap to create a third colour, green - which can be achieved using the riso printing technique that I use for the zine. The first page of the poem talks about colours (colors in Robert's spelling! I chose to stay with the authenticity of the Canadian spelling rather than change it to my English), so it felt important that my first decision was about colour. The chosen colours can denote sky, water, sunshine, land - the colours of landscape. Some of my images intentionally bleed sky, water and land together, which, having read about the flooding of the fierce and tidal Fraser River, expresses how I think of it - a living, changing, yet ever constant force that shapes its land and the lives around it. All these ideas, and more, are woven into the issue.

Printed on recycled paper using plant based riso inks, I hope you enjoy the issue, which can be ordered from my shop page. Imminent 5 is selling quickly, so do grab a copy while you can.

Fruit Routes in the Festival of Ideas

I'm delighted to be making something for Fruit Routes Loughborough again, the artist-led project to create an edible campus at Loughborough University. This year we are celebrating ten years of the project and it's part of the wider Festival of Ideas: Transitions. Details are in the flyer below - I hope some of you can join us.

 

 

 

Any minit

I wrote to Robert Hogg to let him know that copies of Imminent were on their way to him, over in Canada. He emailed back with a poem, which made me laugh, copied below. (Another of Robert's poems is included in Issue 4 of the zine, which you can order from my shop for only £3).

 

Imminent 4 is imminent! (for Jo Dacombe
 
Any minit
in a mint
Altoids are
 
asteroids
one time
immanent
 
in Wales
now eminently
imported by
 
Wrigley
Canada
from who
 
knows
where
they'll fall
 
to my tongue so
Curiously Strong
or so it says
 
on the tin
they could be made
in China or
 
Timbuktu
or simply fall
from stars
 

All proceeds from the zine support the printing costs of the next one. There will be more from Robert in future issues that I'm planning, so do sign up for updates or subscribe to make sure you don't miss them. 

Thank you for your support for the zine, for poets and artists who contribute, and for caring about the natural world.