A new selection from Philip Hughes' unpublished notebooks going back over twenty-five years. In an astonishing collection of twenty-seven notebooks created over a quarter of a century, Philip Hughes has sought to capture the spirit of a place: its geological structure, its relationship with the surrounding landscape, and its occasional signs of human intervention. These painterly but topographically precise notebooks record moments when the artist has been moved to draw what he can see, whether from the shelter of a standing stone in Orkney, Scotland, from the air over the Simpson desert in Australia, or from a postal boat sailing through the Norwegian fjords. Pieced together by Hughes himself from over a thousand drawings, this is a logbook of momentary observations. Some are swift sketches of fields or horizons, others are slower studies of lichen and flowers in Antarctica, or lines of quartz in granite in Cornwall. The depth of feeling and knowledge Hughes has for different terrains and climates underpins the beauty of this essential and inspiring selection of notebooks.

In over 140 superbly reproduced artworks, the artist Philip Hughes records eleven iconic walks across the length and breadth of Britain, from Allt Coire Pheiginn in Scotland to Zennor Head in Cornwall. Inspired and informed by maps, aerial photographs and electronic survey techniques, Hughes's clean, spacious artworks, with their arresting blocks of colour, make contemporary some of the most ancient and formidable landmarks of the British Isles. Hughes's artworks - often incorporating written notes, archaeological scans and contour maps - feature important heritage sites, including Neolithic settlements such as Maes Howe in Orkney, standing stones such as Stonehenge, the Three Peaks in Yorkshire, or places of particular mystery and beauty such as Silbury Hill, the oldest and tallest artificial mound in Europe. Notebook spreads contain exquisite drawings and paintings made on the spot and vivid extracts from Hughes's diaries and notes, help to evoke the mood and atmosphere of the awe-inspiring landscapes. Complete with an enlightening introduction by writer Kay Syrad and short prefaces to each of the sections by Hughes himself, this beautiful, reflective book will resonate with artists, walkers and anyone who shares a love of ancient sites in the landscape.

Food is fundamental to life. The way we produce it is the most pressing issue of our times. In recent years, several family-run farms in the downlands of West Dorset have decided to radically change their approach to working the land. When the artist Chris Drury and poet-novelist Kay Syrad began collaborating with this group of farmers in the villages of Godmanstone and Sydling St Nicholas, they began to discover why these changes were being made and what they might mean for the local communities - and all of us - who depend on the farmed landscape for food. Chris Drury's artwork and Kay Syrad's prose-poetry combine here to form a sensitive and authentic portrait of a group of men and women whose lives are shaped by the land. It is a rich exploration of work, soil and the sustainability of their farming practice. With its focus on a very particular landscape, the book reveals to us the creativity and resilience of organic farming, and shows just how much we all need to value the complexities of food production and our future relationship with the land.

[P]oems like delicate essays, in the sense of attempts-circling, being-with, tentative and tender [...] poems like seed heads, fragility and delicacy, balanced, a symmetry [...] seeding more thinking [... a tender] engagement with moss, air, horizon, the political, the scientific, the human, the non-human and the spaces-between where these things meet. The space on the page, within the poems, and between the poet writing and the world observed, is so delicately balanced. - Dr. Kim Lasky slow build inside/outside what is left unsaid what is beneath what is noticed what is undeclared what evolves, enmeshes, becomes, denies visual-like camouflage like a movement-eyes dance on page, not sure where to go feeling accumulate through pattern of words - many unsaid, but felt What is near talks about what is far-deep time-what is within-unsaid earth suffering earth joy, despite it all - Chris Drury [an exploration of] the political, the specifics of natural things (eg. birds, moss, trees, landscape), boundaries and spaces; and the sense of place, all with sensuality and infinite sensitivity, including the self and its relationship to nature. We were especially aware of how [the poems] handle the very contemporary sense of language with all its problems of reference [exploring] the interconnectedness of all things through linguistic and visual means. - Professor Peter Abbs & Dr. Lisa Dart

An astonishing and delightful new poetry collection by novelist, poet and freelance writer Kay Syrad. -- Cyngor Llyfrau Cymru