The Gardener and The Goddess - now available here

 Poet and writer, Jane Whittle, explored Britain alone on foot for many years before settling on the coast of West Wales, where she began to make a garden from a patch of un-tamed mountainside 'in a place where rainbows land'. The poems in this book arose from that mysterious space between dream and reality experienced in the landscape, first by solitary long distance walking and then by sinking a root in one unspoiled place. They are accompanied by the author's own illustrations.

The poems are divided into two halves. The first half are in the voice of The Gardener, the woman who has stopped her physical journeying and has settled, finding 'new strength/to stay at home'. We are taken on the Gardener's inner journey through the seasons, from spring when 'New arrivals/crowd their neighbours/budding intermezzos drown in brazen greens' to winter, when 'The earth is hard on new flowers/broken by gales and frost'. Through her we meet the Goddess in different guises as she allows the Gardener to see the magic of the garden emerge and to experience her at the source of much that is around us - in a faltering stream, in the colours of the rainbow, in a leaf uncurling, in the cycle of elderberries from flower to wine.

In the second half we are privileged to hear the voice of the Goddess herself, first as Eurynome from early Greek myth who created the earth with the help of the serpent Ophion but banished him when he tried to take all the credit, then as she reveals herself in water, in wind, in a poem but above all in the earth. 'Lay yourself down/ and become land' she says, 'Listen - you will hear me'. 'As I turn and re-turn/, I return you to life.../  Remember my story.'

Jane Whittle's language throughout is skillful, simple with the simplicity of archetype, conveying in a few well-chosen words a depth of meaning that offers us new insights and delights.

Copies of The Gardener and The Goddess published by Brigit's Forge ( ISBN 978-0-9574106-1-9) are available to buy from this website (see sidebar) whether or not you have a PayPal account.

Re-emerging and 'The Goddess and The Gardener' book launch

I've been away from the blog for quite a few weeks now. It's been a very challenging start to the year, one way and another. As the sun rises in the sky and graces us with its presence for longer, I'm very slowly coming back to life.

Apart from my health, one of the challenges has been publishing another small poetry book under my Brigit's Forge imprint - this time not my own book but the first step in publishing other poets. For various reasons the process has been fraught with difficulties but at long last it's come to fruition. The Goddess and The Gardener by Jane Whittle is a sequence of poems written after she moved to Wales and began transforming a wild space into a garden, working with the energies of the land and of nature and absorbing them to such an extent that she herself grows along with the landscape and the voice of the goddess begins to speak through her.

We had the book launch at the Penrallt Bookshop in Machynlleth and I'm pleased to say it was a great success. Many books were sold so it was a good night for us and for Penrallt Books while the audience appear to have genuinely enjoyed it - the feedback passed on to us by Diane at the bookshop after the event was lovely to hear: 'enjoyable and enlivening', ' a wonderful evening of words', 'inspiring', 'a special evening'. All I would want for Brigit's Forge!

The picture above shows the book on display, in very august company. As well as talking about how my very small press, Brigit's Forge, came about, I also read some poems from The Sea Road and  tested some new ones which led to selling more copies of The Sea Road. I promptly spent some of the proceeds on the book you can see in the picture, The Art of Robert Frost by Tim Kendall, an action I haven't regretted as it's a fascinating introduction to his poetry which includes 65 of the poems with commentary showing how Frost's poetry and its themes developed.

I'll be making a page or another blog for Brigit's Forge Press in due course and will say a bit more about the book and offer it for sale. For now I'm taking things slowly and surely and just saying 'hello again'.