Far Country - poems by Kyce Bello

It is a lovely thing when other artists and creatives contact you out of the blue.  Some time ago I had an email from Kyce Bello, a poet who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Kyce had read my article in called Soul on Deck published in Image Journal and was drawn to the image of the Bardsey Boats I created in 2013.  In her blog called Old Recipe for a New World  she recounts the story of finding the image in a post called SOUL BOATS:POEMS AS VESSEL.  She writes;  “It was love at first sight. I tore the page with the fleet of Bardsey Boats out and pinned it over my desk. They became a beacon as I wrote and re-wrote this book”. 

I was delighted when Kyce ask me if she could use the image for the front cover of Far Country, a new collection of poems published by the University of Nevada Press.  Her beautiful, elemental poems are tinged with grief and loss.  Somehow, they have a kinship with these tiny boat images gilded on to driftwood from Bardsey Island. We corresponded recently and in an email to her I wrote; 

“Simple pre-industrial boat forms seem to get “under the door” and seep into the soul like no other image.  There is something primal around the vessel cradling/nurture/protecting at birth and yet offering safe passage across the threshold from life into death. All very mysterious, primal and wonderful – beyond intellect and more to do with intuition, ancestors and spirit life.  They have given me so much and I am still learning from them.”