A Persistence of Visions
Limited edition. Tipped-in colour plates.
A battle between images and words takes place in a mediaeval setting: Writing
sends silent e’s as spies to eavesdrop on its foes, conspiring with speech
to send regiments of invective to batter images in their castles with metal
trebuchets, typewriters. Rotten sentences hurled like dead cows land in exquisite
pastoral scenes. It transpires that it was none other than our Island’s
authors who, to add to their armoury of terms for warfare, engineered an Empire
in order to plunder other Nations for the sounds they made as they was laid
waste.
‘I have sometimes wondered if Vera Rowley might have been up at Cambridge during Wittgenstein’s era - though her joyful detachment seems to have more in common with the great mystics - in spite of her ploys to dispel any aura of spirituality. A marvellous book.’ Jennifer Martyn
‘The humour is as fresh as ever and as always masks serious intent. Lanyon invariably fits his own definition ‘...poets are guardians of the groundless, last bastions for phantoms...’ and at his best achieves its conclusion ‘...striving to touch the immaterial lightly with their lips, they sear the sea’. John McDowall.