The Birmingham Art Book

Jan30

In this post, I’m featuring a new resident on the Landing Book Shelves, a Christmas gift no less. The book is the Birmingham Art Book: The City Through the Eyes of its Artists edited by Emma Bennett (who also created the cover art and wrote the preface). Joe Lycett has contributed a foreword, setting the tone for the book by declaring, ‘Birmingham, as I’m sure you’re aware, is the best city in the world. And the art here is the best in the world too.’

Front cover of The Birmingham Art Book, showing an image of the Council House by Emma Bennett

This book is the seventh title in a series of city art books published by UIT Cambridge Ltd. I hadn’t come across this series before, but I notice that Dublin and Edinburgh are included, so I might have to explore further. If you remember, I did a post some while ago about the Silent Traveller in Edinburgh, so I am following a favourite city theme here. It could build into a whole new sub-collection (as if I needed another one).

The Birmingham Art Book features the work of sixty-one artists, some having more than one piece included creating a collection of wonderful images of the city. The views included here are depicted in a wide range of styles and media, giving the collection a very vibrant feel. It’s a book for dipping into over and over again as each time you browse the images, another detail from the Birmingham landscape is revealed. I’m a Brummie born and bred and despite having moved away years ago, I do go back to visit regularly. This book is a lovely souvenir to have, a reminder of all the myriad buildings, parks and features that make up the city. It’s also a very nice addition to my Brummie collection. I haven’t added to it since buying This is Not Your Final Form, a poetry collection from Emma Press.

Back cover of the Birmingham Art Book, showing some images from the book and other titles in the series.

But of course, I never get chance to mooch around the city as much as I would like. I therefore found that the book’s city depictions had a huge nostalgia value for me. I kept spotting things that made me exclaim, ‘Ooh, I remember that!’ However, I have also been scratching my head at other images, not being quite able to place something that I feel I ought to remember. I’m also reminded of places that I haven’t re-visited in ages, such as the Barber Institute and the Electric Cinema.

It is nice to see that the suburbs get a look in too. More nostalgia here; Cadbury’s, Kings Heath, Moseley and Cannon Hill Park. There are so many great images in this collection that it would be hard to pick out a shortlist of favourites. I will just name check a few though I could easily end up listing the entire contents:

I smiled at the close-up depiction of the gargoyles on St Martin’s Church looking with what seems to be an expression of amazement at the Selfridges Building (Graham Leonard King).
Robert Geoghegan’s picture of Cannon Hill Park full of Canada Geese. The tagline on the painting reads: ‘Today:Cannon Hill Park. Tomorrow: The World’. I also like his portrait of ‘Old Joe’ at the University of Birmingham, The Owl and the Clocktower. I love the owl!
Alexander Edwards (Brumhaus) has a graphic-style view of the Jewellery Quarter, especially pleasing to me, as I was around that area for the first time in ages before Christmas.
I include in my picks a couple of city centre views, as I was busy spotting buildings that I recognised: Bird’s Eye New Street by Chris Eckersley and Memories of Birmingham by Martin Stuart Moore.
And finally, a mention for the travel poster/Art Deco inspired peices by Milan Topalović. The view of China Town is gorgeous.
And finally, finally let’s not forget the differing depictions of the Library of Birmingham, the Rotunda, the canal scenes, the Floozie in the Jacuzzi, The Bull and the Grand Central.

Highly recommended to Brummies past and present! Go out and buy one (and no, I’m not on commission).

This is Not Your Final Form: Emma Press

Mar22

For this post I am having a change of direction and featuring a poetry book as I have not done so for a quite a while (sadly remiss of me). The collection This is Not Your Final Form (edited by Richard O’Brien and Emma Wright) is comprised of entrants and winners from the Birmingham based 2017 Verve Festival Poetry Competition. This book isn’t a long term TBR item as it only took up residence on my bedside table a few months ago and I did start reading it straightaway. I was browsing on the Emma Press website and as a Brummagem lass now based in Dublin, this collection was too tempting to pass up, so dear reader, I bought a copy. The back-cover blurb says this is ‘a tough, unsentimental love letter to the Midlands metropolis, which finds beauty in concrete and unity in contradiction’. And there is certainly a lot of concrete in Birmingham to inspire conflicting emotions, especially as Birmingham never seems to achieve its ‘final form’. I suspect it never will.

Canals and stories

There are so many poems that I like in this anthology, that it is difficult to know what to feature in a short article such as this. I am simply going to pull out a few themes from the collection that particularly resonated with me, starting with that old saying about Birmingham having more canals than Venice. I think that one cropped up in three poems altogether. Here’s an extract from ‘Birmingham – some advice’ by Rob Walton which amused me, as it suggested that we should change the saying to better attract tourists to Birmingham:

Seems you have ‘more canals than Venice’,
but surely ‘more canals than roads’ would be more impressive.
And wetter. Which could lead to more souvenir towel sales.
I got soaked in Birmingham! How about you?

I like the sound of the idea, but would it work I wonder? Let’s have your tea towel designs on a postcard please! Kibriya Mehrban’s poem takes as its title ‘More Canals than Venice’ and links the man-made waterways of Birmingham with rivers, tears and the currents that brought her family to Birmingham from Kashmir:

We were washed into this world,
soaking it with our colour.
Some stood, splattered, scandalised,
while others called us sisters and brothers,
offered us cloud cover.

When my grandfather first saw a girl in a hijab
working at the local post office,
he cried this city a river.

Mehrban’s poem tells us her family’s story though different generations and experiences. How they found a home in Birmingham despite the hostility of some people. This collection serves to remind us that Birmingham has been the scene of many family stories, some sad, some happy, during its long history. Birmingham also played a crucial role in the story of the modern nation. Rishi Dastidar’s lines say it all:

The middle is where the future started –
our modern world was invented here.
Minds, steam, capital met in manner uncharted –
the middle is where the future started.

An unsolved mystery

Continuing with the theme of story, what place would be complete without at least one unsolved mystery? The one featured in this collection was somewhat macabre and has proved endlessly fascinating to later generations as this poem proves. ‘Who put Bella in the Wych Elm Tree?’ by Helen Rehman is about a 1940s murder that remains unsolved to this day. In 1943, four boys were poaching in Hagley Wood when they discovered a skeleton, later found to be that of a female, hidden within a tree trunk. To cut a long story short, there have been many theories and stories around the discovery. These were partly fuelled by the appearance of graffiti that gave a possible name to the dead woman. The poem title references one version of the provocative question, which appeared on locations around the Midlands after the remains were found.

As the last verse tells it, time has moved on, the remains can no longer be located and the mystery endures:

The skeleton’s mislaid, the experts can’t agree,
the boys are grown and gone and lost to history;
she haunts the city’s dreams and grows a mystery.
I wonder who put Bella in the wych elm tree.

Brummie-isms

I move onto what is possibly my favourite poem in the book as it references some of the Brummie expressions that I grew up with and still fondly remember. The strange thing about local quirks of language is that you accept them while young and it never occurs to you to ask where/why/how these expressions came about. Here’s a snippet from ‘Never in a rain of pig’s pudding’ by Jill Munro:

You can take the girl out of Brummagem,
let her leave behind old Winson Street.
dress her in some bostin Southern glad rags,
marry her to a yampy Cockney with some ackers

…

But don’t throw this babby out with the bathwater,
for so long as it’s a bit black over Bill’s mother’s
you’ll never take the Brummagem out of the girl –
even way down south, she’ll always be Our Kid.

I like the last line, it reminds me of my uncle calling my dad ‘Our Kid’ even though dad was the eldest brother. If anyone wants an explanation of some of the terms in the verses quoted, there is a handy guide on the Birmingham Live website, giving you fifty Brummie and Black Country words and phrases to chew over. Not all the phrases given necessarily originated in or are exclusive to Brum as language travels as people move around the country.

I’m going to finish with my own contribution to the topic of language with one of my Paragraph Planet pieces from 2016, with some of my Brummagem memories.

I’ll just note that whereas Jill Munro’s poem has ‘faces as long as Livery Street’, I grew up with ‘arms as long as…’. Which just goes to show the adaptability of the local lingo.

That’s it for now and I hope it won’t be too long before I dig another poetry book out of the Landing Book Shelves!

A Pre-Raphaelite Summer (Reading part 2)

Nov1

As you will probably have guessed, this art-themed post is to be the second part of my belated round up of summer reading. Very belated, considering that Halloween is upon us as I write. Again, I propose a quick nod to three more of the books on my recently accomplished list, but just drop me a line if you want a little more information on anything. This blog post fails to do justice to some fascinating books, but I hope that at least by mentioning them, the inspiration to explore further may strike someone reading the post. I still want to mention the remainder of the summer reads, but I will pop those in here as and when I can, so that I may begin writing about my autumn reading (at this rate I will never catch up!)

To continue with the list in reading order (which again is also following a roughly chronological trajectory) I begin with Desperate Romantics: the Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites (Franny Moyle, John Murray, 2009). This I bought in 2009, having heard of, but not watched the television series loosely based on the book. I was curious to read it after having heard about the rollicking television series, but clearly my curiosity faded, as the book remained un-read until this year. I am glad however that finally I got around to reading Moyle’s book, which draws on the wealth of research available on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB). She explores the tangled relationships of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and their models, wives, lovers and artistic colleagues. The champion of Pre-Raphaelitism, John Ruskin; Rossetti’s one time teacher Ford Maddox Brown and later PRB members William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones all have parts in the painterly drama.

Desperate Romantics inspired a re-read of Lizzie Siddal: the Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel (Lucinda Hawksley, Andre Deutsch, 2004, 2005). This is an excellent account of Lizzie Siddal’s life, but I think the subtitle was an unfortunate choice. As Hawksley makes clear, Siddal had her own artistic ambitions, both as a painter and a poet and was not merely Dante Rossetti’s model (and lover). Not surprisingly, the book jacket features Lizzie Siddal’s most famous modelling role, that of Ophelia for Millais’ painting of that name. However, Lizzie had ambitions for herself and renowned critic John Ruskin considered Lizzie talented enough to become her patron. I knew that Lizzie Siddal had painted (see below) but I had had no idea that she wrote too. Apparently, the poetic bent was not enough to endear Siddal to Dante’s poet sister Christina Rossetti who saw nothing to admire in her and disapproved of her relationship with Dante.

Ending my Pre-Raphaelite binge was Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists (Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Thames and Hudson, 1998). Manchester City Art Galleries originally published this book in 1997 to accompany its exhibition, which I saw in 1998 when it travelled to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Some of Lizzie Siddal’s work was on show at the exhibition, such as Pippa Passes (pen and ink drawing) and Lady Clare (watercolour on paper). For some reason I never bought the catalogue at the time so I was delighted to receive this copy as a Christmas present last year. Both the exhibition and the book highlighted women whose work was part of the wider Pre-Raphaelite tradition. As was pointed out in the book, Pre-Raphaelitism was a collegiate movement and female artists were able to benefit from support between men and women (Pamela Gerrish Nunn). Perhaps not surprisingly, several women featured came from artistic families and were able to count on that support to aid their artistic growth. Ford Maddox Brown’s two daughters Lucy and Catherine painted, taught by their father. Also coming from artistic families were Rebecca Solomon, Rosa Brett and Emma Sandys all of whom had brothers who became professional painters.

It was great to re-discover this book and to browse the artworks again. I will leave you with a sentence from Gerrish Nunn’s essay, which sums up for me the whole purpose of the exhibition and catalogue:

Woman – the object, icon, motif and motive of whom and from whom Pre-Raphaelitism is said to have been made – has perversely, masked the presence within the movement of women – active, executive autonomous subjects making Pre-Raphaelitism.

I hope you have enjoyed that snapshot of my Pre-Raphaelite summer reading. Do let me know if you have an interest in this area. I’d love to hear from you!