Description
The Echoing Gallery presents thirty-three of the finest contemporary poets living in or associated with Bristol, both familiar names – Philip Gross, Helen Dunmore, Jane Griffiths, to take just three – and up and coming new voices, each specially commissioned to write a response to the city’s wide-ranging art in public spaces and galleries. Whether paintings, sculptures, statues, architecture or graffiti, all are echoed wonderfully in each newly created poem, as poem responds to art and art is altered by poem. Many of the paintings and sculpture are to be found in the city’s fine art collections in Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in Queen’s Road. But the poets have been attracted by other work around the city, too. It’s difficult to miss the sculpture of John Cabot outside the Arnolfini, or Pero’s echoing bridge, but what of the sundial in a house nestled between office blocks and student accommodation in Charles Street, or the mirror maze in the grounds of Royal Fort House? And how easy it is to overlook the gorgeous rough detail of the beetle in Anchor Square lurking around the corner from Cary Grant and Thomas Chatterton. Edited by Rachael Boast (Forward Poetry Prize Winner 2012) this vibrant anthology has been created to map not only the art itself, but the current host of talented poets through whose keen eyes we get a glimpse of Bristol rewritten into a new light. The Echoing Gallery, which has received an Arts Council England grant, is to be launched as an event at the Bristol Poetry Festival (Wednesday 2nd October 7.30p.m) at The Orangery, Goldney Hall. A celebration, with readings, is planned at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery in 2014. SBN: 978-1-908326-41-6 72pp full colour throughout softback September 2013
