At the beginning of 2006, Linda France set herself the challenge of writing a renga verse every day for twelve months. Renga dates from 10th century Japan, when poets would gather together over tea or saki to write verses about the seasons, nature, love and the moon - the phenomenal world of change and decay.
Adapting the classical Japanese form, Linda France has created a new one, the world's first 'year renga'. Friends, walks, the weather, things seen, heard and read, became her collaborators in 365 word pictures that bear witness to the flow of things, inside and out, the numinous and the everyday.
Illustrated by Sue Dunne's striking ceramic fragments - reliefs created by casting flowers, leaves and branches found in the woods and hedgerows of Northumberland as a year unfolds - book of days is concerned with paying attention to the world, natural and man-made, its mystery and significance, in a time when the seasons are out of kilter.
"Simplicity's deceptive. Here is a gathering of verses that carry, alone and together, a whole year's work - and not only that but many an earlier year of writing-work as well - so lightly. Here is the gathered grace and strength of the spider's web that took all night to spin."
Gillian Allnutt
"Linda France opens herself to the act of finding one image each day; within that day, recording loss and delight, allowing herself the lulls that are often enough. The form and its practice Linda has offered are a step into the poetics of the day. Take up this book and in doing so you too can take up the form."
Alec Finlay
Linda France was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne, and now lives near Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. Her previous books include Red (1992), The Gentleness of the Very Tall (1994), Storyville (1997), The Simultaneous Dress (2002) and The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club (2005). In 2006 she and Sue Dunne worked together on Wildling for STanza Poetry Festival.
Sue Dunne was born in rural Essex. She studied Ceramics in Bath, and has worked in various potteries, some in Ireland and Scotland. She has lived in Northumberland for the last twenty-five years.
