PUBLICATIONS

I have been lucky enough to have had very beautiful books and an online essay published in collaboration with some of the best poets and writers in Scotland, Ireland and beyond, of which the following is a selection:

Utopian Tales/Utopische Märchen
Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days, by Jack Zipes. This limited edition features socialist and communist fairy-tales mainly written in the 1920s (with a notable contribution by artist Kurt Schwitters) selected and translated by Jack Zipes. It is an extended edition of Zipes’ Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days, first published in 1989, with additional tales, the original German texts, and 60 newly commissioned illustrations – one for the original German version of each tale, and one for the English translation.

This edition, designed and produced by Barrie Tullett, includes illustrations by myself and artists from around the UK, including Russell Mills and David Schofield. Published by Caseroom Press. Lincon, UK (2016)

Kathleen Jamie: essays and poems on her work
Ed. Rachel Falconer. Published by Edinburgh University Press (2015).

Create & Curate

Art and Writing by women in HMP YOI Cornton Vale, Scotland

Published by The University of Stirling (2014)

This little book showcases an important arts and writing project at HMP YOI Cornton Vale in Stirling, with poet Evlynn Sharp and artist Brigid Collins, in collaboration with the prison’s New College Lanarkshire Learning Centre, Artlink Central and with backing from Scottish Government agency Education Scotland.

The women who took part created their own artworks as well as curating an exhibition using works loaned from the University’s extensive art collection as a catalyst for their own creative writing and responses through visual art, in the form of ‘Poem-Houses’, a unique form of artwork for ‘housing’ poetry developed by artist, Brigid Collins.

The project culminated with a special launch for this publication at the prison on International Women’s Day 2014, for which the theme was “Inspiring Change”. Rita, one of the participants, said it was “a way to unlock all sorts of emotions and feelings, without judgement . . . an artistic breath of fresh air…”

https://www.stir.ac.uk/news/2014/04/uni-prison-project

Frissure
Collection of artworks and prose poems, in collaboration with poet Kathleen Jamie. Published by Birlinn (Polygon), Edinburgh (2013).

“At first I tried to write ‘poems’ but the tone was all wrong. Too smart, too concluded. A looser weave was required, something thready, gauzy, that could be unpicked. Thready? Gauzy? Brigid’s work was having its effect on me. So, I wrote a few lines from notes I’d made when I was recovering. It seemed that they were falling into themes, though the themes blended into each other. Healing, certainly. Mortality, of course. The idea of the gift. Intimacy. The natural world. The notion of the line. Memory and heredity. All had arisen during my treatment and recovery, but none was strictly medical. In Brigid’s work the texts are not repeated whole, but as fragments, fugitive.”

– Kathleen Jamie, in Frissure (Polygon, 2013)

Collins, B. and Jamie, K., Frissure. Essay.
Published in Granta Magazine, London, UK (2012).
Available: https://granta.com/frissure/

For A’ That
Booker Prize-winning author DBC Pierre is among the contributors to a book celebrating the life of Robert Burns, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s national poet. The words of Robert Burns, poet and artist, have crossed the decades, the centuries and the globe, meaning something different to every one of us. The University of Dundee especially commissioned writers from around the world to converge upon the pages of a unique anthology – DBC Pierre, Janice Galloway, Bill Manhire and Kirsty Gunn – as well as national stars of the literary world –Jim Stewart, Stewart Crossley and the late Gavin Wallace – and some of the best lesser-known literary names to celebrate a great life well and truly lived by Scotland’s best-known literary figure. In addition, a folio of stunning original artwork was created exclusively for the book, by Brigid Collins and is here brought together in an exciting book design by Tim Bremner.
Published by The University of Dundee Press (2009).

a place where thought happens…
Limited edition (500) Artist’s Book, in collaboration with poet Larry Butler, Jewellery & Metalwork Designer Teena Ramsay. Published by Incertus Press (2006). Supported by The Hope Scott Trust and The University of Dundee.

Room to Rhyme
In collaboration with poet and Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney.
Published by The University of Dundee (2004).

“The images create a powerful sense of the past, elegiac but never nostalgic…”
– Susan Mansfield in The Scotsman: Review of Room to Rhyme

The Therapeutic Garden

By Donald Norfolk
Illustrated by Brigid Collins

Published by Bantam Press, London (2000)

Gardening is one of today’s most popular leisure pursuits, yet rarely, if ever, is it seen as a holistic, therapeutic practice that can both enrich our lives and fulfil our spiritual needs.

In this exquisitely crafted and illustrated book – comprising a full-colour wraparound dust jacket and containing delicate collages around monochromatic watercolour studies, designed and illustrated by Brigid Collins – acclaimed osteopath and author Donald Norfolk attempts to redress the balance as he explores the history of horticulture, and the ancient wisdom of poets and philosophers. Tracing the natural rhythms and beauty of the changing seasons, he also demonstrates how we can all discover the secrets of nature’s healing, restorative powers.

Uniquely inspirational and illuminating – like a medieval Book of Hours, to be treasured and loved – THE THERAPEUTIC GARDEN invites us to recapture the simple pleasures of the past and to create a new, enriched vision of the future. It is a vision that leads us to understand how, when we cultivate the soil, we can also cultivate the soul.