Poetry and Art. Jane Hirshfield and Holly Downing. A Kerosene Beauty and Ledger.
Environmental themed poetry readings by Jane Hirshfield and conversation with artist, Holly Downing. The pair talk about their creative collaboration which led to the publication, by Nawakum Press (2017), of a unique book ‘A Kerosene Beauty'. Jane will also read from her latest poetry book ‘Ledger’ (2020).
A Kerosene Beauty, published by David Pascoe of Nawakum Press, is a stunning artist's book inspired by nature and an acute awareness of its fragility. Beneath it’s slate stone leaf cover, it holds twelve searing poems by the poet Jane Hirshfield, lamenting the potential apocalypse that Global Climate Change represents, and seven hauntingly beautiful mezzotints by Holly Downing, each inspired by the words of one of the poems. The text was printed in cast lead type by Pat Reagh in Sebastopol, California and the book bound by Lisa Van Pelt of Philo, California. With 48 pages comprised of half dozen elegant papers, the book measures 15" x 9" and is housed in a Japanese wooden book and drawstring bag.
Thursday Feb 4th at 7pm (zoom)
Jane Hirshfield, named “among the modern masters” by The Washington Post, is one of the leading voices for the environment in American poetry. She is the author of nine poetry books, including Ledger, which appeared in spring 2020 from Knopf; The Beauty, long-listed for the 2015 National Book Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt,, finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is also the author of two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform The World, and is editor/co-translator of four books collecting the work of world poets from the deep past. Hirshfield's honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Academy of American Poets; the California Book Award and Poetry Center Book Award; and best book of the year selections from The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times. A former chancellor of The Academy of American Poets, Hirshfield’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and ten editions of The Best American Poetry. In April 2017 she read to 50,000 people on the Washington Mall at the first March for Science and founded, in conjunction with that event, Poets For Science, a traveling project and exhibition housed at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, Ohio. While never a full time academic, she has taught at Stanford, UC Berkeley, Bennington’s MFA Seminars, and numerous writing conferences, and has also guest-edited volumes of The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Ploughshares, and The Alaska Quarterly Review. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Holly Downing is a long time resident of Sebastopol, and former art instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College. Her paintings and mezzotints have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in London where she used to live; Edinburgh; Manila, Philippines; Medford, Oregon; Seattle; San Francisco; Berkeley, San Jose, Fresno and Santa Rosa, and in group exhibitions across the U.S., including the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco, and internationally.
She is a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Greenshields Foundation, Canada; the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Graham Foundation, Chicago and the San Francisco Phelan Foundation, among others.
Ms Downing’s work is in many museum and artist’s book collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford, U.K.; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco; New York Public Library; Stanford University Art Museum; Bancroft Library, Berkeley University; Beinecke Rare Book Library, Yale. Downing’s mezzotints are included in many publications, including the catalogue Penumbrae, Holly Downing Paintings and Mezzotints; The Mezzotint, History and Technique, by Carol Wax, 1996; Holly Downing, 25 Years of Mezzotints, catalogue raisonné, 2001; Printmakers’ Secrets edited by Tony Dyson, London, 2009; and Drawn to Language, Fisher Art Museum, University of Southern California, 2013.
Inspired by her extensive travels and observations of nature, Downing has, for the last 12 years, brought a focus on environmental concerns to her work - from her respect of indigenous cultures that have lived compatibility with their environments, to California wildfires, to species and habitat loss.
To buy Jane Hirshfield's LEDGER:
Go to your local independent bookstore, including Copperfields in Sebastopol.
Bookshop.org, supporting independent bookstores https://bookshop.org/books/ledger-poems/9780525657804,
Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Ledger-Poems-Jane-Hirshfield/dp/0525657800/ref=sr_1_1
