Estuary: A Confluence of Art & Poetry
Published by Moon and Mountain, 2012
Art Editor: Harriette Lawler
Poetry Editor: Agnes Marton
“An estuary is that part of the mouth or lower course of a river in which the river’s current meets the sea’s tide. An abundance of nutrient-rich food is found in this biome. Estuarine environments are among the most productive on earth, creating habitats for 1000s of species to live, feed, and reproduce. 26 artists and 57 poets from around the world have come together in this 120 page, full color book to create an estuary of images and words, art and poetry flowing together.”
Poets: Kathleen Jones, Pippa Little, Ágnes Lehóczky, Suzannah Evans, JP Reese, Ira Lightman, Leo Schulz, Toshiyuki Nagashima, Joshua Kam, Alex Pruteanu, Meg Tuite, Ruth Aylett, Kim Moore, Kevin Ridgeway, Ian Duhig, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Graham Burchell, Tiffany Anne Tondut, Mary Stone Dockery, Claire Trévien, Ameerah Arjanee, Karen Dennison, Tara Birch, Laura Kasischke, Rachel McGladdery, Kristine Ong Muslim, Ryan Van Winkle, Vera Pejovič, Dom Gabrielli, Rick Holland, Susan Keiser, Carolyn Srygley-Moore, Tricia McCallum, Pascale Petit, Noel Duffy, Anna Puhakka, Harry Owen, Melissa Lee-Houghton, Rose Aiello Morales, Yuyutsu Sharma, Antoine Cassar, Peycho Kanev, Robert Vaughan, Agnes Marton, Lisa Gordon, Linda Rose Parkes, Michelle McGrane, Abegail Morley, Kushal Poddar, Rowyda Amin, Lindsey Holland, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Zoë Brigley, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Traci Brimhall, Adrienne J. Odasso and Aad de Gids.
Artists: Véronique Brosset, Mark Erickson, Virginia Erdie, Pia B. Lehmann, Ilham Badreddine Mahfouz, Midori McCabe, Brad Michael Moore, Alberto D’Assumpção, Hego Goevert, Olga Dmytrenko, Neil Nieuwoudt, Goro Endow, Ljiljana Lazičić-Putnik, Constantin Severin, Michael Berry, Mohammad Bin Lamin, Katerina Dramitinou, Adrian Bayreuther, Mi-Sun Lee, Emmy Verschoor, Izabella Pavlushko, Mani Bour, Linaji, Harriette Lawler, Oralei Fauble and Juan Rodrigo Piedrahita.
‘Dusted Beans and Broken Beams’
by Mark Erickson
diptych, oil and acrylic on canvas
46 x 41 cm (left )
46 x 38 cm (right)
Zones of Convergence
Pippa Little
What washes up on different shores?
You walk with your camera, I walk with mine:
orange globes, nets and lines, hasps, rusted pulleys,
a child’s sandal warped and bleached, toys, bottle-tops,
soft drink cans and crab-legs’ bright enamel blue,
truck tyres and crockery and scatterings of coal,
sea glass and souls, bloated ships’ cats,
jellyfish and hag-stones, tampax applicators, drums and sleeves
kettles and car parts, cans of beans in Cyrillic alphabets …
‘it might be a boat, gathering the interest of gannets
who follow in her wake, rest on her prow,
might be small plastics, wrapped tight by a net
which comes to be a community of various fish, dolphins,
even sharks’*
… they are gathering and gathering in spirals, like and unlike
finding each other, massing and accruing,
and the sea for all its muscle cannot swallow, rot them down
or spit them free, but must suffer them
as a bull its goads:
our seas are strange to one another
but in these mirror maps we make
Leviathan rises, knows our complicity.
* from ‘Convergences’, Jon Bonfiglio, Captain,
The Clipperton Project, Blog, March 2012.
‘Lit Out for the Territory’
by Mark Erickson
oil and acrylic on canvas
101 x 76 cm
Moving Out
Suzannah Evans
Before we left we took the fireworks from the attic
to Ynyslas to let them go on the dunes.
We stood close together, heard marram
scratch against its neighbours as sand
came into our shoes, warm
in memory of the day’s heat.
The last train clanked out across the estuary
red tail lights tracking the marsh.
Night sliced open blue and silver, and inside it
we saw water, Aberdyfi stacked on the hillside.
Then one taut voice said go
and we ran, five of us jumped
in the back of the Escort, shivering,
smelling gunpowder on each other’s hair.
‘Lost Playground’
by Pia B. Lehmann
toys, plaster, wood, sand, metal, and color on canvas
60 x 70 x 7 cm
Sand Dollar
JP Reese
Washed ashore, I am the coin
of mermaids in your palm.
Your eyes see only treasure,
not the measure of my end.
The sand moves, sculpted by wind.
Endings clarify, chasten.
Lifted from a suitcase, I am the memory
of sun slashed across a cheekbone,
wind-ruffled sea grass, the curl of foam
that spumes above green waves;
bonfires that sear the night sky,
a kiss from one whose footprints
disappeared beyond the dunes.
I am the arid bone of flowered stars.
‘Great Big Floating Hellcat in My Kitchen’
by Neil Nieuwoudt
mixed media collage on 200 gsm watercolor paper
55 x 65 cm
From the Plague Journal
Ian Duhig
I have been asked to write about our food.
I remember nights spent hulling ration-rice,
soya beans pressed dry before they got to us,
boiling black market sweetfish to hide their smell
from our Neighbourhood Monitor. We ate everything:
reed-root, pig-weed, tugwort, bar-weed –
these may not be the scientific names.
We smuggled grated radish and bracken-sprouts
past our Neighbourhood Monitor once he started fainting,
propped beneath his Government banderoles:
‘There’s Always Space to Plant a Pumpkin!’
‘The War is Only Just Beginning!’
Later, our food became medicine:
dried fig-grubs for the incontinence;
ant-lions in sake for the headaches;
leek-leaves and cucumber for the burns.
I sold my son’s thousand-stitch belt
for peaches and eggs which I mashed and strained,
mashed and strained. Still my children died,
the last little Tadashi, setting his weasel-traps
of bamboo and abalone shells round the pond
he’d stocked with a few, tiny carp fry.
That is all I remember about our food.
‘Patch Ponders Paradise’
by Michael Berry
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 cm
The Island Dog
Tricia McCallum
He is everyone’s,
Yet he is no one’s.
Vacationers arrive, discover him,
dote on him for two weeks,
then disappear.
He is their holiday project,
a story they’ll tell over dinner at home.
Some allow him in, to sleep at the foot of their beds,
to guard their front door,
Some even toy with the idea of a rescue,
Could we, should we? Shots? Papers?
Questions asked
with the exuberance of the relaxed and the happy,
but as the time to leave draws near,
reality encroaches, the idea stalls.
A new band takes their place.
The island dog waits,
knowing it will take only one,
one, to give him a name that won’t change,
one, to call it out in the dark
should he wander too far.
One, to call to him
and him alone:
Come home.
‘Journey Inside the Whale’
by Ilham Badreddine Mahfouz
acrylic on canvas
163 x 214 cm
Virginia’s Last Walk
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
The day collapsed on me:
there was nowhere to go
but full forward,
so my feet stepped on,
surer than I that
there was no way back.
I loaded the pockets
of my smock with
stone on grey stone,
and stood on the bank
smelling the river-stink,
watching the churn of weeds.
A wood-pigeon broke
from a high branch,
and I lifted my head
to the slap-flutter of wings,
the flash of a purple throat –
a momentary distraction.
I eased myself into the Ouse,
let its wet fingers mangle me,
and the weight of my dress
pull me down and down.
The river swallowed me,
closed in over my head.
The day had collapsed:
I had nowhere to go
but full, fast forward,
so my feet stepped on,
surer than I that
there was no way back.
from Estuary: A Confluence of Art & Poetry
(Moon and Mountain, 2012).
Visit Moon and Mountain’s website.
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Peony Moon 