1st May. Heard the first cuckoo. The garden had butterflies, orangetips and whites, peacocks and admirals.

2nd May. Settling in to being at home. Despite having worked hard to get things done in time for Bologna none of the publishers took any of the work i had done for them along. There were good and rational reasons for all of this, projects not far enough advanced, wanting to get things finished and proofed up on the right paper etc. But I had worked long and hard to get things done and began to wonder why. So today the sun is shining and I walked and thought about things instead of sitting in my studio and getting on with work. To hell with deadlines, today I want lifelines.

Tom and Hannah's Grandmother died on Monday after a long illness. She was diagnosed with cancer twelve years ago, and then we feared that she would not live to see the children grow. But she did and she loved them so. In her young life she lost a child who died so young. Every year, on the date that would have been his birthday she would buy flowers for him. She had tremendous courage having had a child die so young to go on and have Tim and Penny, and I know that as she watched Tom and Hannah grow she often saw echoes of her two children in them.

When she was young she was a very beautiful woman, slim and elegant. And she was strong to survive the things that she did, and she will be missed.

So, instead of working I walked on the cliffs in the wind and the sunshine and thought of Glenys and her baby, Simon, who are maybe together now, at long last, and looked at the carpets of flowers that blushed the earth with pinks and blues.

When trees grow where the wind blows hard they bend and twist with the currents of air. But they still grow. All the while I walk there is a wolf in my head in a gloaming twilight cloak of stars, waiting to find a story.

And in the garden, despite my lack of interest and ability there are blossoms and flowers everywhere too.

2nd May. A buttercoloured moon in an ink dark sky.

4th May. Yesterday finally managed to get myself back on the end of a paint brush. Work is going slowly and I have too much to do and want to write not paint. MBF card coming together and deadline for the Terry Pratchett painting was end of April.

6th May. No rain and the skin of the earth is cracked like a raku pot. But the fields are a rich green and each day there are more flowers, cowslips and bluebells, campion and primrose.

Almost finished the mbf card but needing to pull it all together and sneak up on it when it is not looking.

Yesterday a beautiful boat sailed by, distant and mysterious in the early morning mist.

7th May. Fractured and restless working day. Evening watching swallows skimming low through a field of emerald grass, threading their flight patterns between black and white horses. It is cold.

8th May. Bright white dagger beaked-gannets flew close to the shore. Curlews crouched in the shelter of hedgebanks. A man with a bottle on a stick came and fished for water in the sea. He caught some and imprisoned it with a lid. It looked like a strange form of madness. Fishing for mermaid's tears? A drop in the ocean?

Tiny roses blossom already, flowers so small, scent so big.

9th May. Peregrine scouted the sky overhead. Raven swooped low over the cat, checking to see what the bright flame of colour was that walked so far beneath him. Ponies with foals galloped across the field.   10th May. The garden is heaven scented with flowers, red roses, apple blossom, honeysuckle and clematis. Work has been difficult all week as I have too much to do and am finding focus difficult, so spent a few days working up a sample piece for Tell me a Dragon, which I wrote a couple of years ago and for which Frances Lincoln have been fairly patiently waiting for roughs to go with the words. To begin with I enjoyed working up the painting and all seemed to be going well, but, inevitably now that it is almost finished I want to start all over again and do it properly this time. Soon I think it will be time to do something radically different in order to save my sanity, but in the meantime I have been reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman. This has led on to getting hold of a luxurious copy of The Sandman, Vertigo edition and I am lost in the wonder of the graffic novel. Never having been a fan of comics in youth The Sandman is a wonderful revelation and I have been staying up far too late lost in the dreamworld of Morpheus when I should have been dreaming myself. Things spin and twine together. The story of a child born in a state of sleep who never woke up. The wolf on the boat, a child in a red coat. A coat of twilight stars. The palace of the sea god, Dylan, wrecks of boats sunk all over the sea, pulled together to make a castle. Images that dance in the brain. Twenty six letters to weave into stories.   And through all of this Tony Blaire announces that he will leave the country in peace. Well, maybe not the right phrase for a political leader who has led us by the nose into five wars in his ten year reign. I am sure there will be more parting speeches, and more platitudes. He says that maybe he did not always get things right, but that he always tried to do the right thing. I say, read this, it speaks more eloquently than I ever could. All this was done in our name and paid for with our taxes.

Spread eleven from "Tell Me A Dragon".

Curled around my pillow

My dragon sleeps

And keeps

One eye on the door

To be sure

That no monsters creep

Into my dreams.

 

12th May. Head empty, scattered thoughts spread who knows where, and feeling useless.

In London there is an exhibition by one of my favorite illustrators, Angela Barratt. The exhibition can also be seen online.

14th May. Meanwhile back to what I should be doing. Singing to the Sun, walking the dogs and the cats and doing radio interviews on behalf of the cats for BBC Radio Wales (Roy Noble).

 

 

Later, over the hill, the rain has coloured the grass to a deep green, and each day more flowers thread through the fields and stone walls and hedges. Pixie shone gold in the deep green.

16th May. Working away on Singing to the Sun when finally get feedback from Frances Lincoln on the dragon painting.

"The only comment from some people is that there is not much of the dragon showing on this spread. I think there need to be some spreads where the dragons are very large and the children small."

Oh well.

17th May. Fed up with publishers and knocking myself out to do work took the dogs up the hill. For the first time in an age the cats stayed at home. The air was warm and a gentle wind made music all around. Because I did not wish to rush back and paint we walked further.

We all live beneath an ocean of air, and this place where I live now is beautiful. If all I have to worry about is that I do not feel appreciated by a publisher I have worked with for years, and that there are not enough hours in the day, then I am lucky. Lay down in the sunshine on a bank of soft grass filled with cowslip and vetch and all manner of colours, above a deep blue-green sea.

Walked along by stone walls made by men, women and children centuries ago from stone gathered in the fields. Working from dawn to dusk they carve up the hillside above the sea into close-cropped fields of pasture. Centuries later the people are not even a memory, but the walls still stand, softened now by lichens and flowers, painted by algae, run through by mice and weasels, nested in by birds.

 

18th May. So different a day today with the world wrapped in cloud and cold. Walked around St Davids Head in splendid isolation. Cliffs still carpeted with flowers, but many held tight shut against the cold. Tiny scarlet pimpernel and stonecrop shut against the change in the weather.

The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems has been shortlisted for the CLPE poetry award, which is wonderful. The shortlist looks like this.

The shortlist for the 2007 CLPE Poetry Award is as follows:

Chrissie Gittins: I Don’t Want an Avocado for an Uncle, illustrated by Kev Adamson, Rabbit Hole Publications £5.99 9780954328818

Julie Johnstone (editor): The Thing That Mattered Most. Scottish Poems for Children, illustrated by Iain McIntosh, Scottish PoetryLibrary/Black & White Publishing £6.99 9781845020958

Tony Mitton: My Hat and All That, illustrated by Sue Heap, Corgi £3.99 9780440867258

Gaby Morgan (editor): Fairy Poems, illustrated by Matilda Harrison, Macmillan £5.99 97840508558

Jackie Morris (compiler and illustrator): The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems, Barefoot Books £14.99 9781905236558

John Siddique: Don’t Wear It On Your Head, Don’t Stick It Down Your Pants, Peepal Tree Press £4.95 9781845230562

The judges are Ian McMillan and Fiona Waters, and the judging panel is chaired by Margaret Meek Spencer.

21st May. Review for Classic Poems in the New York Times.

Children's Books

Rhyme Zone

“Children will meet some of the best-known poetry in English in Jackie Morris’s “The Barefoot Book of Classic Poems.” Some are so well known as to seem superfluous (“The Road Not Taken,” or Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), yet it’s worth remembering that children themselves are new. The bright watercolors and intriguing hints of story that Morris splashes across the pages make this an attractive venue for first encounters with the soon-to-be-familiar. Though Morris revels in the romantic (“She Walks in Beauty”), her art serves other moods as well — the “jocund company” of Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” Siegfried Sassoon’s bitter memories of war. Even without the lush format, the more than 70 poems have enough range and allure to entice the young and the adults who read to them. Luminaries like Yeats and Poe keep amiable company with Ogden Nash (“The Tale of Custard the Dragon”) and Alfred Noyes (“The Highwayman”).”

 

Later today I will be doing more reveling in the romantic.

In the morning walking I watched the wind play on a field of long grass.

All day I worked at drawing out the image for the Disc World Calendar 2008. Already very late, but spent the day working steadily and happily.

Then this evening took the dogs and the cats back up to the top of the hill. On the way up a cuckoo called repeatedly from the top of the hill. On the rock all was still and the light made the cats glow a deep red. The sun sank towards the horizon. The sea was calm. Then as the sun set it picked out the silhouette of the Wicklow Hills in Ireland 40 miles across the sea, clear and beautiful. Now, if you whispered the name of your lover the gentle breeze would carry it across the Irish Sea and a couple walking hand in hand across the Wicklow Hills would hear it.

Walking back down to home in the gloaming light a few swallows still criss-crossed the sky and the cuckoo still called a mournful tune.

22nd May. Yesterday could see all the way across the emerald sea to the Emerald Isle. Today the sky closed in and in the evening couldn't even see St Davids. Today was a steady day of painting and levitating cats.

23rd May. Mist closed in again morning and evening. In the morning walking to Porth Melgan saw curlew, chough, raven and shearwaters lost in the mist. Larry ran through the water chasing sticks. No one around at all, peace. In the evening the mist was so thick that you could not see across from one side of the field to the next. Sound was tangled in the beads of water that hung so fragile in the air. Painted in between walking.

Walking back through the mist it was so quiet you could hear a snail eating butterbur.

 

24th May. Cuckoos in flight, a raven, small birds with voices like bells,fields a patchwork of pattern as farmers cut silage. Tired of waiting for a publisher to commit to work, packaged up East of the Sun and West of the moon and sent it out to a few publishers, including Anne McNeil, at Hachette, who years ago published my first picture book. A strange feeling to send writing out. Part of me wants to keep it safe and secret, but the realistic part knows that a word only lives when it is read. Fingers crossed.

25th May. More cuckoos, in flight and calling. Another day slipped away in hanging up washing and colouring in.

27th May. In the middle of the night I woke to the sound of rain making music on the roof. Now the ash tree bends as the North West Wind storms through the garden. It is cold. Listening to the wonderful Leon Rosselson for the first time in a long time. And I realize that I am angry and that as our government gears itself up to bring on the next generation of nuclear power stations the time has come to do something. Or rather, too much time has gone past of doing nothing.

Finished the Disc World painting. To see others from the past few years click on the image below.

29th May. Unable to settle to new work and beginning to get very frustrated with myself. Thoughts like bees in my head, but getting nowhere fast. Up the hill Bella found a pheasant but was shocked when the bird stood its ground and turned to fight. Brave bird. Called Bella off and she withdrew, confused. In a clump of gorse and bracken the bird had a clutch of tiny chicks. Brave mother , fierce as a tiger. All day the cuckoo called with increasing desperation until answered by the bubbling notes of a female.

The air was still. The first dragonfly, fresh and emerald green with glassy wings that whispered and rattled.

31st May. Bats early in the twilight and the moon big and full. Birds filled every piece of the air with song in the green light at Abermawr. Fund some peace in painting.

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