The British-Breton poet Claire Trevien ( https://www.clairetrevien.co.uk/ ) has been asking the Twitterati to submit selfies so that she can experiment with portraiture. Filled with nothing more than a sense of my own self-importance, I sent her the image that you can see on the previous page in this blog (https://wordpress.com/post/wildandhomelessbooks.com/498}.
Not having been in this position before, and not having expected to be the subject of a portrait, I had no idea of the sheer sense of gratitude and the gratification that can arise from seeing the end result. Claire has done an excellent job (particularly given the fairly base material she had to work from) and has really captured some of the natural born bookseller’s native arrogance 🙂
Claire is an excellent poet, and I commend her work to you all. I saw her one woman performance of The Shipwrecked House at Bridport Arts Centre in 2014 or 15, which was like one of those gigs you go to by a favourite band where they play the best songs off their latest album, but in a different and more enchanting order. Her following collection, Asteronymes*, reinforced the overriding sense of a voice well worth listening to. I can’t comment on last year’s Brain Fugue yet, as I – mea maxima culpa – haven’t read it yet (to be rectified shortly). Anyway, head over to her website and get on board.
The portrait is now winging it’s way to Wild & Homeless, where it will take pride of place among the precious things of the shop. It won’t displace the Audrey Hepburn screenprint, but I’m hoping it might work some sort of Dorian Gray magic.
Postscript: It occurs to me that I’ve not yet updated this site (or any other) with regards to the latest lockdown. I’ll do that separately, perhaps tomorrow.
* This entire piece is missing a number of accents over vowels. Apologies, particularly to Claire.
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