Viva Brighton Issue #61 March 2018

littletoller.co.uk us$30 uk£20
ISBN 978-1-90821-352-5
ISBN 978-1-908213-52-5 53000
ISBN 978-1-90821-352-5
53000
9 781908 213525
9 781908 213525
BITS AND BOOKS
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BOOK REVIEW: SPRINGLINES
Sometimes when I walk
down London Road it’s easy
to forget that I live in the
prettiest county in England.
Sussex, with her picturesque
villages such as Ditchling,
Rodmell, and Firle; the
Downs rolling like huge
green waves, the sea mirroring
the vast expanse of blue
above; all those country lanes
and country pubs, seem like a
mirage as I trudge down this
street of charity shops and
fast food outlets. Don’t get me wrong – I love the
Open Market, and the fact that all human life is
here, but since the old Co-op department store
went, London Road has become a stark illustration
of what austerity can do to a town.
Springlines acts as a much needed remedy to my
jaded mood. The book explores, in word and
image, pockets of water from Windmill Field in
Lewes to Holywell, in Eastbourne via Chanctonbury
Ring, High Hurstwood, and Poverty
Bottom. Clare Best supplies the evocative words
and Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis the striking images,
a sequence of poems and a series of paintings.
I should declare at this point that I know Clare
very well. She taught at the University of Brighton
for ten years, and she’s a native of the county. In
2012 I helped bring her collection Excisions to
publication. The central sequence in the book
comprises poems that explore Clare’s experience
of having a preventative double mastectomy. She
lost many of her female relatives to breast cancer,
and so, on the advice of her doctors, went under
the knife. The book is a testament to her serenity
SPRINGLINES
Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis & Clare Best
in the face of a decision that
Springlines emerged from a walk on the South
Downs during the drought of spring 2012.
Starting can’t that day, have Clare Best and been Mary Anne easy to make.
Aytoun-Ellis went in search of bodies of water
that are concealed, forgotten or overlooked.
Along I sensed the way, they found some places rich in of this history
places from when dewponds to I ancient first wells, looked at
history, wildlife, culture and myth.
This book presents work made in response to
watery
from old clay pits to furnace ponds, from chalk
springs to the man-made pools at Glyndebourne.
Mary
Springlines.
Anne’s paintings and drawings
It’s
sit with
an exquisite
Clare’s words, alongside short pieces by other
contemporary writers and water subjects drawn
and production, painted by John Sell Cotman, Joshua Aytoun-Ellis’s
Cristall, Henry Edridge, J. M. W. Turner and
others, to create a book that approaches some
of paintings the most evocative hidden of corners copses, of English ponds,
landscape and celebrates the vitality of water.
snowy hills, and winter trees
giving a feeling of austere
sumptuousness to Clare’s
spare and exact poems. My
favourite poem is one that
a little toller book
Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis manages to be perfectly
£20
www.littletoller.co.uk
Clare Best
symmetrical across horizontal
and vertical axes, so that it’s first line: ‘flint, broken
broken flint’ becomes its last line, the caesurae
mirroring the way a stretch of water mirrors the
landscape and skyscape reflected in its depths. And
there’s Aytoun-Ellis’s painting to act as the perfect
accompaniment to Clare’s words.
But the poet and the painter are only half of the
story. The book also has a middle section, with
contributions from writers like Robert Macfarlane,
Alison Brackenbury, and Alexandra Harris, and
paintings by artists such as Turner and Cotman,
as well as more obscure names such as Müller,
Eldridge, and Cristall. The book’s large format
(27cm x 22.4 cm) perfectly accommodates the
world of water, copse, tree, and hill, and it’s been
beautifully conceived and executed.
Clare is leaving Sussex in March, moving with
her husband Philip and whippet Flint to Suffolk.
The next time I go down London Road I’ll think
of Clare’s walks through Sussex, and I know my
spirits will lift.
John O’Donoghue
Published by Little Toller Books, £20
SPRINGLINES
Exploring hidden and mysterious bodies of water
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