In the late 1060s, twenty-one year old David Peat created a portfolio of photographs to gain entry to the film business. Peat who was regarded as a leading cinematographer and documentary film maker, gave permission for Renaissance Press to publish these remarkable images which have remain unseen by the public for forty years.

The Glasgow photographed in 1968 has long gone, but the sights and smells of that time still exist in the recollections of those who lived as children in the streets and back courts of Gorbals, Tradeston, Maryhill and beyond. The black and white photographs in this book can still sharpen the memory as no other medium can.

By David Peat. Contributors Alan Spence, Robin Gillanders, David Bruce, Billy Connolly. To be published – 9 June 2012

ISBN 978-0-954-3961-3-8

£9.99 (Advance order)

This charming book is the result of a unique collaboration by two leading practitioners in their fields, the poet George Bruce and the artist Elizabeth Blackadder. The title refers to George Bruce’s habit of delivering these little haiku poems, late at night, through the letterboxes of his neighbours and particularly that of the book’s editor, Lucina Prestige. The subject-matter of the 157 poems and 143 images ranges from the domestic to the global and beyond: philosophical haiku, cat haiku, bath haiku, garden haiku, fish haiku, delicately illustrated by Elizabeth Blackadder. Bruce’s great sense of humour is fully evident is these delightful seventeen-syllable poems, modelled on the Japanese haiku, but so also is his capacity to stir deep feeling in the fewest possible words.

George Bruce, who died in 2002 at the age of 93, was one of the last major figures of the Scottish Literary Renaissance of the twentieth century. His poetry ranges from the evocation of his origins in the port of Fraserburgh on Scotland’s north-east coast through philosophical, personal and contemporary issues to the ironic and light-hearted. In 1999, at the age of ninety, he won the Saltire Prize for the best Scottish book of the year for his collection, Pursuit: poems 1986-1998.

Elizabeth Blackadder is one of Britain’s favourite artists. She worked with George Bruce on Through the Letterbox in the year before he died. Her instinctive economy of style and her particular interest in Japanese art makes her the ideal illustrator for such a book. Her cats, flowers and Japanese symbols are a perfect response to Bruce’s poems. The format of the book, A5 landscape, provides just the right shape and space for this delightful combination of words and images. Elizabeth Blackadder is the Queen’s Limner in Scotland and is a Dame of the British Empire.

ISBN 0-9543961-0-3

£9.99

Renaissance Press announces its latest book – a follow-up to the very popular Through the Letterbox. Again it takes the form of a delightful combination of poetry and art. Morning Glory consists of a beautiful sequence of poems – a mixture of haiku and tanka by poet Alan Spence – complemented by the exquisite illustrations of Elizabeth Blackadder.

Elizabeth Blackadder DBE RA RSA
Elizabeth Blackadder is one of Scotland’s finest artists. She studied at Edinburgh College of Art and belongs to a long tradition of Scottish artists whose use of colour is widely recognised. Her interest in Japan (reflected in her work) make her the perfect artist to illustrate a book of haiku and tanka.

Alan Spence
Alan Spence is one of Scotland’s best loved writers. An award winning poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright, he is Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen where he is also artistic director of the annual WORD Festival. Regarded as a master of the haiku, his previous collections include Glasgow Zen, Seasons of the Heart and Clear Light.

ISBN 978-0954-3961-2-1

Price: £9.99

This volume began life as a new collection of poems. Sadly due to the death of its author, the poet George Bruce, in 2002, it was transformed into a collection of final and uncollected poems.

The book begins with a number of poems written especially for the artist John Bellany – one of these is the title poem

ISBN 978-0-9543961-1-4

£9.99

Polygon 2001. Preface by Edwin Morgan. Collected and edited by Lucina Prestige.
Cover Illustration by John Bellany.

This book contains a lifetime’s experience of making poems, which is reflected in the wide range of subject matter. From observations of life in a Scottish fishing port to poems about the great painters of the world – El Greco, Rembrandt, Cezanne, Van Gogh and others, and finally the painter John Bellany, Today Tomorrow encompasses an immense range of subject matter from poems about love and everyday events to poems about political matters and universal themes.

‘George Bruce who at the age of 92 achieved Thomas Hardy’s claimed ambition to become the oldest poet of any consequence to publish a book containing new verse’
Robert Nye, The Scotsman

‘The life, work and sheer energy of Bruce is a result of a dedication to the art of poetry few can sustain or hope to match’
George Gunn

ISBN 0748662995

£10

In his final years, as well as producing Through the Letterbox with Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, he also worked with his friend, the artist, John Bellany, on two special projects relating poems to etchings. Though of different generations, Bellany and Bruce shared a common background – the fishing communities of the North Sea.

John Bellany is one of Britain’s leading and most influential artists since the second world war. His style is unique and instantly recognisable. Rooted (as is Bruce) in a sense of a community on the sea’s edge, his dramatic and emotional images convey life, love and loss against the ever-present backdrop of the hard business of making a living from the sea itself.

Completed in 2002, the title of the portfolio is expressed in George Bruce’s poems in response to Bellany’s images.

Dimensions 27 x 22.5 inches; 69 x 57 cm
Price £2,000, Limited edition (50 copies signed by Bruce and Bellany)

A limited number of individual etchings are also available at £400.00 each.

Prospective purchasers are advised that as these are limited editions, they should make direct contact with Renaissance Press by email or telephone 00 44 (0)131 556 3118

Dimensions 17 x 15.5 inches; 44 x 39 cm.
Price £1,500 per copy. Limited edition (30 copies signed by Bellany).

A limited number of individual etchings are also available at £250 each.

Prospective purchasers are advised that as these are limited editions, they should make direct contact with Renaissance Press by email or telephone 00 44 (0)131 556 3118

Renaissance Press is offering a reproduction of the cover illustration of Morning Glory. This is a limited edition of one hundred, signed and numbered by Elizabeth Blackadder and printed on very high quality paper. The total size is 23″ x 16″ (59×42 cms) including border, making a most attractive picture. (Unframed).

Price £160; postage and packing £5.

A BBC Scotland Producer, he pioneered arts broadcasting on radio and television. With Sea Talk (1944) and his later collections, he achieved a very individual style of expression, dealing with a wide range of issues, from the personal to the international, but often rooted in his upbringing in the fishing communities of Buchan. In 1999, at the age of ninety, he won the Saltire Society ‘Book of the Year’ award for his collection of poems, Pursuit. Two years later in 2001 he published Today Tomorrow containing his work from 1933 to 2000.

With his deep interest in the visual artists, he was the ideal collaborator for Elizabeth Blackadder and John Bellany. His haiku, written towards the end of his life, are matched perfectly by Blackadder in Through the Letterbox and his affinity with Bellany through their common fishing ancestry resulted in the outstanding folios Woman of the North Sea and The Sacred Sea. His final collected poems, published posthumously, The Singing of the Foxes (2007) also includes images by Bellany.

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