Confluence is the result of a collaboration: Rosemary Terry’s woodcuts selected from a previous project in 2022 have found a common purpose with some of Julia Brant’s haiku (short 3 line poems originating in Japan), written over 25 years.
Both seek to capture a moment in nature in the changing seasons that gives an insight into a wider universe. The images and the haiku are not meant to “match”, but to show how one person’s perception can be echoed by another’s, to convey a shared mood or feeling from a different perspective.
From this collaboration has come a limited edition book of poems and images, together with an exhibition of the 28 printed pairings.
TO PURCHASE: ‘Confluence’ is for sale at £70.00 (plus postage and package). Please contact Simon@generaloffice.co.uk (07976 935413) and we will be happy to arrange.
Introduction to the woodcuts
These 28 woodcuts have been selected from a larger series entitled ‘52 Observations’, made originally for ‘52 Weeks’, a regional artists group project and exhibition of playing-card-sized works inspired by nature, one for every week of 2022, which was shown in April 2024 at the General Office Gallery Stourbridge.
Each of these images developed from something in nature, sometimes unspectacular or easily overlooked, which caught my eye whilst out dog walking in Wolverhampton, Norfolk or Devon in 2022. There’s a sense of a journey through the seasons, tracking the appearance of trees, plants and birds, sun, moon and water, alongside the weather, throughout the year. I added my own limitations: the prints had to be black and white and in portrait orientation. A lifelong sculptor, accustomed to carving wood and stone, I have recently adopted woodcuts as a lateral move to accommodate arthritic hands. I’m inspired by the wood engravings of early pioneer Thomas Bewick and of Eric Ravilious, where tiny worlds are evoked in black and white. The relentless requirement of the 52 weeks project to produce an image each week inspired by nature somehow encouraged spontaneity and experimentation.
I was immediately drawn to Julia’s haiku on first reading recently; to their skilful evocation in three lines of a whole world of sensation or experience. And I recognised common ground: both bodies of work are based on seasonal observations of nature, or mood: specific, sometimes eccentric, vignettes encapsulating a moment in time. In the case of the haiku this might relate to one moment from a period spanning 20 or more years; for the woodcuts, a moment in a mere twelve months. In pairing woodcuts and haiku together we looked for common threads; a synergy, an echoing, rather than literal similarity, both bodies of work having evolved entirely separately and with no knowledge of each other. We resisted the temptation to start to respond to each other’s work and make new pieces, feeling this would compromise the integrity of each. We hope the resulting pairings create a fresh reflection on our human place within the natural world.
Rosemary Terry
Introduction – the haiku
The form of the haiku as we know it today has come down to us from 15thC Japan. There, haiku emerged from a more elaborate form of poetry practised by nobility and the courtiers of the Imperial court. In its now more compact form, its aim was to capture in 3 lines of 17 syllables the fleeting moments of human life, death, and above all, a sense of mortality and passing time as reflected in, and by, the natural world. The great Japanese haiku poets of later centuries – Basho, Issa, Santoku, Shiki and others – extended the expressive power of the haiku. Today, haiku are composed across the globe, in all languages and by all kinds of people from all kinds of backgrounds. They speak to a universal human truth, in their capacity to express a far greater meaning than 3 short lines of poetry can normally carry. There are structural rules in their original Japanese form, but these have loosened across languages and in English, these have given way to a wide spectrum of variations on 3 lines and a wide variety of topics.
I first encountered haiku in 2002 through an informal group who met each month, and from whom I learnt a great deal. I have written haiku on and off ever since then and found much inspiration in the natural world, and in the follies of the human condition. I find the haiku a perfect means to capture that fleeting moment that is difficult to pin down, but which carries a world of meaning within it.
The haiku I have written here partner by happy coincidence with Rosemary Terry’s exquisite wood engravings. She realised that there was the opportunity to pair a selection of her images created for a recent separate project, with a selection of my haiku written over 2 or more decades, to illustrate a complementary view of the natural world. Some share a season, some don’t, but they have in common a way of seeing the natural world. In so many environments this is under attack, which has prompted me to capture those moments which may well disappear for ever from any small patch of nature, or indeed from any of the earth’s wider ecosystems.
I hope you enjoy viewing and absorbing this pairing as much as we have enjoyed compiling it.
© Julia Brant 2024
