Review by Tracey Foster of "Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy" by Martin Gayford

At least they can't cancel Spring was a refrain coined by David Hockney in 2020 when he found himself locked down in Normandy, surrounded by his newly acquired orchard.

Gayford, who is the art critic for the Spectator, had a long relationship with Hockney that went back over 45 years. Having previously written two books together, History of Pictures and Secret Knowledge, the pair were in constant communication before the outbreak of Covid-19. Sharing images, thoughts, connections via emails and post, the impact of lockdown was to become a focus during the subsequent isolation of the artist in his new studio, a converted barn. To use Hockney’s favourite word, they had a good natter. The premise of this book is to explore that period and the outpouring of landscapes that came from confinement, whilst making connections between other artworks and theories and the fragility of the human race. While we were condemned to sofa surfing, team meetings, home schooling and baking bread, Hockney and Gayford looked closely at our relationship with nature and the art of sitting still and noticing every detail about us.

We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are part of it, not outside it. This in time will be over and then what?

This chimes with the mood of the period, when we quit our confines for daily walks and began to turn to nature for relief. Finding solace in the sunsets, wellness in our woodlands, we, like Hockney, looked at the details around us. Back when the mortality of our existence was a daily bulletin, Hockney was aware of his presence and role as an observer and recorder of life. 

I've witnessed quite a few changes in the art world and you know, most artists are going to be forgotten. That's their fate. It might be mine too. 

The landscapes he drew with pencil, paintbrush and iPad were simple marks and dots of colour but conveyed the freshness of nature unfurling in a time of great immobility. The inevitably of Spring, nature's great drive to procreate and live, was a reminder of our raison d'etre when we needed it most. 

This book is a great commentary on the lockdown of 2020, seen through the eyes of two people. Their conversations and discussions traverse art, opera, food, postcards and fairy tales. This is a roundabout ride of ideas and ideology, focusing on themes close to the artist’s heart: colour, shade, time, perspective, water and nature with reference to those who influenced him most, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Hokusai and Rembrandt. The book is punctuated throughout with glorious images that pay homage to the skill of the mark maker and a visual history of time, weather and viewpoints.

I last saw a Hockney retrospective in 2012 at the Royal Academy of Arts, A Bigger Picture. Although I was aware of his large portraits, California pools and Wolds landscapes, it was his pencil sketches that fascinated me most. His draftsman skills are imbued with sensitivity as he layers up marks to create texture and depth. This was at the forefront when I read this book. The Normandy iPad sketches he created with a bespoke painting app use similar marks and movement to convey the cherry blossoms, riverbeds and pathways surrounding the farm.

Hockney finally left his Normandy studio at the end of 2024 and moved back to London. Failing health in his late eighties has drawn him closer to amenities and available health care. A prolific artist who has worked every day since turning sixteen, and who painted the mantra Get up and start work straight away on his bedroom chest of drawers, is not due to stop work soon. We can only wait to see what becomes his next muse. 

Everybody's looking at the same picture, but they don't see the same thing. We see with memory. 

About the reviewer
After a long career as an Art and Design teacher, Tracey Foster wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, The Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Cold Moon Journal, Madswirl, Five Fleas, the Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site The Small Sublime found here.

Review by Kate Durban of "My Name is Mercy" by Martin Figura

Martin Figura’s new collection was created as a project at Salisbury NHS foundation trust. These powerful poems offer a unique insight and perspective into the life of a hospital, and its inhabitants, during the pandemic. They convey the impact of Covid-19 on patients, families and staff in telling detail, resonant metaphors and poetic eloquence. The poems give us a moving glimpse of personal perspectives with great honesty and poignancy.

The collection opens with a poem about the journey to work in "Morning," which describes the stark emptiness of streets against the menace of the hospital chimneys. This evocation of place amplifies the collection. There is a sense of different worlds: the pettiness of people fighting over toilet rolls against the daily sacrifice of those battling Covid, patients and staff alike.

The experience of the illness itself is devastatingly captured in "Mother’s Day": "each deep breath coughed, the retching blue lit trip," and the fear brought by hallucinations in "Fever." There is death, but recovery too, reflected in the return of appetite: "delicious want, a little mash and gravy."

We see the experience of the health workers caring for the sick. In "Protection," the hot claustrophobia of PPE is a tempest, which soaks uniforms and leaves "faces run with rain." In "Night Shift," someone’s reflection is like an astronaut adrift from the world, in a universe of flickering monitors, once again conveying a sense of other worldliness. There is the raw grief of an end-of-life nurse who cuts short her maternity leave to come back to work and copes with seven deaths in a day. Everywhere there seems to be profound sickness, isolation and grief.

And yet even at the heart of the conflict, hope shines through these poems. There is a great sense of optimism and strength in the theme of teamwork. The poem "Notes Left Behind for a Newbie" offers encouragement by a team bound together like a raft. The perspective of staff in a variety of roles is important because it reminds us that doctors and nurses are not the only people who work in hospitals. We hear about the chaplain who ministers where he can in "the emptying out of anger or bedpans." There is the voice of the unseen pathologist in the lab and there is the care for a member of staff who has succumbed to the infection - "one of us," who expresses gratitude for "this family, these friends, this work." We hear of kindnesses - the holding of hands and the talk of home and the joy of online connections. And at the end there is the hope of new life in the Christmas day birth of Ethan. 

Martin Figura’s collection is a mighty accomplishment and by reading it I have been educated, moved and inspired.

About the reviewer

Kate Durban is an MA Creative Writing graduate from the University of Leicester and a part-time Cancer Wellbeing Nurse at Peterborough City Hospital. She lives in rural Northamptonshire with her husband Philip and two dogs.