Events

19 November 2016: Terre Verte Gallery, Altarnun, Cornwall. 6pm.
29th November 2016: Helston Museum, Cornwall. 5pm.

Read on for full details…

Next month we will be hosting the first of our exhibition and reading events at Terre Verte Gallery, Altarnun, on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. Terre Verte is a lovely little gallery run by Richard Sharland, who has a great sense of the sort of space work needs. The gallery also happens to be in one of our favourite moorland villages. For a small village, Altarnun has an important place in Cornish history. Just down the road, John Wesley used to stay, and a tiny museum remains in the cottage that was built for him. It includes work from another prominent Altarnun figure, Neville Northey Burnard, a sculptor who began his career carving gravestones, then went to London to sculpt Romantics and nobles. In the Wesley Cottage Museum, they have a limpet shell cameo by Burnard. Altarnun also boasts the ‘Cathedral of the Moor’, complete with green man carvings, and a holy ducking well for curing madness.

And this is where we’ll be on the 19th November at 6pm. There will be a pop-up exhibition featuring work by John Kilburn and Kate Walters, and readings by Rob Magnuson Smith and Karl O’Hanlon from new and forthcoming Guillemot Press titles Henry and the Moon Baby and And Now They Range. Entrance is £5, which will include a glass of wine. There will be lots of opportunities to talk to the writers and artists, as well as to pick up the latest Guillemot titles and to have these signed.

There is a second event at Helston Museum on the 29th November. This will be a free event with Rob Magnuson Smith reading from Henry and the Moon Baby, which was inspired by the museum’s stuffed scarlet on exhibition. To meet Henry the Parrot and Rob the Writer, come along to the Helston Museum at 5pm. To buy a copy of the pamphlet in advance, visit us here.

We look forward to meeting you, either in Altarnun or in Helston. If there are any queries, please get in touch.

Harvest, by Sister Mary Agnes

As we move towards autumn, we offer our debut poetry booklet, Harvest, by Sister Mary Agnes.

We are delighted with this little book of newly discovered work from the contemplative nun-poet, Agnes, which we have paired with the ‘camera-less photography’ of Dartmoor-based artist Garry Fabian Miller.

Sister Mary Agnes (1928-2014) was a nun in the Poor Clare monastery of Lynton in Devon. She published three slim volumes of her poetry through the 1970s with Workshop Press and Thornhill. Her debut, Daffodils in Ice, was a surprise hit for Workshop’s editor Norman Hidden, outselling their other debuting poet that year, Andrew Motion. Newspapers and the television took an immediate interest in Agnes and her contemplative life, and she found her life and writing the subject of many articles and programmes.

Agnes’s poetry was still and meditative, reflecting the divine as well as intimate natural observations:

I have a window in my cell – the view is magnificent, hills and trees & wonderful sunsets. There’s a cypress tree right outside the window … . I love watching it. You can learn so much from watching things & listening to them.

Year after year, season after season, Sister Mary Agnes watched and listened. The cypress tree recurs throughout her poetry, as do the flowers and birds of the Lynton garden.

Her poetry brought Agnes many admirers, among them Kathleen Raine and Elizabeth Goudge, but as her writing gained momentum, she herself was facing crisis. She had fallen in love – a more worldly sort of love – and while the poetic slippage between the divine lover and the worldly beloved is extraordinarily powerful in her poetry, the tension between monastic discipline and romantic promise led her to the brink of despair. She suffered a terrible breakdown, attempting to end her life, and after almost thirty years clositered at Lynton, Agnes left the monastery, first moving to convalescent homes, then to London. There in the city she continued her quiet life of devotion.

Sister Mary Agnes’s three published collections are Daffodils in Ice, No Ordinary Lover, and a world of stillnesses. Following her breakdown, she published no more. Yet she continued to write, and when she died, in 2014, she left behind a number of full manuscripts and a great many occasional poems.

From these, Harvest was gleaned. The poems of this 40-page booklet chart the period of Agnes’s hope, despair and recovery, offering her signature blend of death-infused delight and devotion as the physical presence of Christ and Lover are explored in beautiful crystal-clear imagery.

(We have several more poetry pamphlets on their way soon, so keep an eye on the website, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.)

The Guillemot Attempts Flight

The launch of our first title, Jack Clemo’s short story The Clay-Dump, with artwork by Tony Martin, was held on Friday night, on Jack Clemo’s 100thbirthday. We went deep into the heart of the China Clay country near St Austell, Clemo’s native landscape, to Wheal Martyn China Clay Park and Museum. Wheal Martyn is a fascinating site, the highlight being the viewing platform over the working Wheal Martyn pit, and the museum currently has an exhibition about Clemo’s life and writing in the foyer, with the poet’s writing desk and typewriter.

We spread out our wares on a table at the café entrance as preparations for the event began, then settled in for an evening of apocalyptic rural-industrial clayscape symbolism. There were readings of Clemo’s poetry from Luke Thompson and Causley House poet-in-residence Isabel Galleymore, followed by a performance of one of Clemo’s early Cornish dialect stories from Rabbit Theatre’s David Mynne. Contrasting Clemo’s early rejection of the natural world, Jane Darke introduced The Wrecking Season, a film about beachcombing made with her husband, the playwright Nick Darke. Rounding off the evening was Philip Marsden, reading from Rising Ground, his book about Cornwall, which includes a chapter on Clemo and the clays.

It was a pleasant evening, and we were proud to launch Guillemot Press and The Clay-Dump on such a unique occasion.

The Guillemot in Cornwall

The Guillemot is a bird of the seas and coasts, and Cornwall is our home. When looking for people to help produce our books, we were pleased to find so much so close. Up the road in Wadebridge, we found Pickle Design, the lovely company that produced the bridled guillemot logo above, as well as the logo you will find in the books. They also made a wooden hand stamp of the Guillemot, which we will be using in the future to make every single book unique. Down the road in Lostwithiel, we found Palace Printers with its owner Roy, an experienced printer happy to play around all day with paper colours, sizes and styles, binding options, end papers and covers, and who has been patient with indecisive birds like us.

We are very pleased to have found so much that’s so near and so good. We love Cornwall and are excited to be supporting such great creative people, all within a few miles of home. And yet, we are not just a local press. Borders don’t mean much to birds, and we are currently looking at artists and writers from across the UK. We’ll have more news on the next project very soon, and hope to see some of you tomorrow at the launch of Jack Clemo’s The Clay-Dump. (10/3/2016)

The Guillemot's First Thoughts

The idea of Guillemot Press is simple: to publish and encourage the sorts of stories and poems we want to read. Little books, beautiful books, intimate books, books that are good to hold as well as to read. Books that fit well in a pocket. Books of the land, and the people of the land. Quiet books, rapturous books, wise books.