Water Rising was honored by a lovely excerpting and feature by the journal Terrain. The piece features three of the poems, three of the watercolors, and some information on the project, Garth Evans, and Leila Philip. Go and check it out here!
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NMH Magazine profiles Leila and features the Water Rising collaboration in their spring issue. See below for “The Year of Working Secretly” by Jennifer Sutton. Leila will be discussing the art collaboration for alumni of the Northfield Mt. Hermon School on June 3rd, 2016 at 2:30pm. http://www.nmhschool.org Water Rising: Book Review To see the full review in Descante (forthcoming Spring/Summer 2016) see attachment below. “With its flawless production values, Water Rising is an inherently fascinating read, and one that should be engaged in with a leisurely pace so as to fully appreciate the poetry, the artwork, and how each fully enhances the other. Simply stated, Water Rising is enthusiastically recommended for personal, community, and academic library collection." -- Midwest Book Review, December 2015 For complete review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/rbw/dec_15.htm  An author interview with Leila Philip featured at The Woven Tale Press. To read more visit: http://thewoventalepress.net/2015/12/14/writer-and-artist/
Water Rising is featured in Art Critical. Be sure to check out the comments by the esteemed poet and art critic Carter Ratcliffe at http://www.artcritical.com/2015/11/07/garth-evans-and-leila-philip-water-rising/  Water Rising has entered the world of online literary magazines. Check out Ander Monson's very cool magazine DIAGRAM to see the poem "Shagbark" with the watercolor we have come to call "Necessary Angel" at http://thediagram.com/15_5/evans_philip.html  A wonderful blurb and response to the galley of Water Rising has come in from art critic and poet, Carter Ratcliff.
Leila Philip's poems are intricately accurate about the look and sound of natural things, the grand sweep of the seasons, and the elusively textured emotions that unite two people in a single enterprise. She is a particularly subtle kind of realist. Garth Evans, a non-figurative sculptor, is seen here as a watercolorist transposing the grand forms of his three-dimensional work to the flatness of paper. Her representations and his abstractions do not, at first glance, seem to have much to do with one another. With attentive reading and looking, however, we begin to perceive in his imagery intimations of specific things--qualities of light, shifting structures of space--and, in hers, openings onto vast, unnamable matters of hope and the flow of time. Each is as much an abstractionist or a realist as the other, and Water Rising joins their work in a magnificent unity. -- Carter Ratcliff, Art in America A gorgeous blurb has come in from David St. John, another poet we greatly admire.
In this exquisite collection, Water Rising, the sublime watercolors of Garth Evans and the lyrical meditations of Leila Philip reflect those tides that rise and course within our lives and through the natural world, in both cases tracing the indelible watermarks that have been left behind. Whether grounded in our intimate daily experience or our artistic hopes and desires, the paintings and poems of Water Rising celebrate our insistence that, in the face of much darkness, we will continue to live along the shores of light and great beauty. -- David St. John, Study for the World's Body We are so grateful for the generosity of writers who took their time to read, look, and respond to Water Rising. In this exquisite collection, Water Rising, the sublime watercolors of Garth Evans and the lyrical meditations of Leila Philip reflect those tides that rise and course within our lives and through the natural world, in both cases tracing the indelible watermarks that have been left behind. Whether grounded in our intimate daily experience or our artistic hopes and desires, the paintings and poems of Water Rising celebrate our insistence that, in the face of much darkness, we will continue to live along the shores of light and great beauty. -- David St. John, Study for the World's Body The silent sound that Leila Philip's poems make on the page is reciprocated by the beautiful articulations of color and form that are Garth Evans' watercolors. Things happen, the poems and paintings both tell us. How and why are mysteries and should remain so, but the happenstance of the art forms, acknowledges a persuasive, crucial gravity -- open-minded souls at their careful work. -- Baron Wormser, Poet Laureate of Maine, 2000-6 The paintings and poems of Garth Evans and Leila Philip “in-form” us, in the deepest sense, of what it is to live alongside, in relationship with, the structures and lives around us. In Water Rising, the ancient argument over which is superior—painting or poetry—is quieted at last. For here, whether taking form in image or in words, the zucchini rise like “zeppelins”: “the surprising weight/ of them lifting/ my basket.” -- Angie Estes, winner of the 2015 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Water Rising is a marvelous collaboration between an artist and a writer, in which lines and colors and words blend and merge to celebrate a small corner of the world. Garth Evans and Leila Philip teach us how to see a place anew, “as if a secret were breaking open.” And now that we know the secret, which is that every place demands love and attention, nothing will ever be the same again.” -- Christopher Merrill, The Trees of the Doves Water Rising is a book whose exquisite individual voices—its poems and watercolors—harmonize like wild singers in a healthy natural landscape. These threads of color and song weave a pattern of music the likes of which has not quite been heard before, a music simultaneously wild and domesticated, cooked and raw, improvisational and carefully notated, a music to be seen as well as simply heard. Although they worked separately, these two singular artists, deeply connected as human beings, have achieved a true collaboration here: this book is larger than the sum of its parts, deeper than the visions of its individual artists. This is collaboration as the best kind of marriage is collaboration: something beyond either life is made real here, made manifest. The book itself is a work of art, not a mere collection of artifacts. As such, it is truly a small miracle, a refuge for contemplation, the real world shown as magic, full of wonder and delight, and precious beyond our mere knowing. -- Michael Hettich, Systems of Vanishing In their gorgeous creation, Water Rising, Leila Philip and Garth Evans present a way of working, a method of living, and an artist's model of how to shape-shift between intimacy and independence. I'm struck by the black and white power of the words (buildings and dwellings unto themselves) and the tender viscera of the paintings' extraordinary color and movement. And, too, how the poems lend shape to beloved terrain, while the paintings enact poetic knowing. Both forms move deftly between their own inner and outer dimensions and together maintain a sustained and passionately engaged conversation. -- Lia Purpura, On Looking In November, Water Rising was nominated for Pushcart Prize in Literature.
The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series is the most honored literary project in America. The series, published each year since 1976, has showcased hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays. For more information on the Pushcart Prize, please click here. Check out our Facebook post about this prestigious nomination.  WATER RISING BY NANCY P. WEISS “Beavers are the Shiva of the animal world. Who knows how a beaver chooses where to make her pond?” The first line of Leila Philip’s poem “Water Rising” sets the tone for a collaborative experience between the reader and the creators of a remarkable work of art, crafted by Philip, an author and professor, and her husband, Garth Evans, a British sculptor with an international reputation. _ The couple wanted to work together to express through their art their responses to the world by using Woodstock as the jumping off point for reflections on change, nature, transcendence and permanence. They decided to push themselves to create outside their traditional media. Philip, a writer of literary nonfiction, would craft poems. Evans, a sculptor, would create watercolors. “Garth and I wanted to do something together and push ourselves creatively. I had received a Guggenheim Fellowship to write and used some of that time to work on poems. Part of the fun of living with an artist is exploring another media,” Philip said. We worked for twelve months on the theme of “here and now,” Philip said one late summer afternoon from the porch of the home she shares with Evans and their son. Noting with a sweep of her hand that a turtle lays eggs on their lawn every year and the wetlands near their home brought her in close contact with the beaver in the title poem. Evans and Philip set out the rules of engagement for their project. While they were producing their work, they would not share it with each other. The poems would not be written to illustrate the watercolors or vice versa. When 12 months were over, they would bring their work together. “I didn’t go into Garth’s studio for a year,” Philip said, “I had to call to him from the top of the stairs. We had many funny moments negotiating ways to keep our distance.” At the end of the year, they invited a friend to come to their home where they laid out Evans’s watercolors and Philip’s poems on the floor of the studio. “Certain pieces went together as if by magnetism,” Philip said, “We knew we had something.” “Water Rising” was born out of their collaboration. The watercolors next to the poems reinforce the texts. The poems, read before the watercolors, ground the images. Their idea of working in different genres on a common theme emerged as they selected twelve watercolors and eleven poems to create a book that is a work of art in itself, printed on watercolor quality paper, cloth bound and sewn on the edge. The result is a beautiful book that will connect back to the community that inspired the work.  Two Woodstock artists collaborate in an expressive new work Friday, October 24, 2014 WOODSTOCK — Inspired by the natural beauty of the Quiet Corner and to challenge themselves as writers and artists, Woodstock residents Leila Philip and Garth Evans have created “Water Rising,” an association of stunning watercolors and haunting poems. The authors are publishing “Water Rising” and plan to use the book, together with music composed by Shirish Korde, to generate conversations about and support for environmental stewardship. Art has played an important role in the preservation of the American landscape and the authors intend for this project to draw upon that histo-ry to challenge and inspire audiences to a greater awareness of and discussion about our relationship to our rural spaces. All net proceeds from the book will go to organizations working to preserve the beauty and natural resources of New England, especially in the Quiet Corner. Garth Evans is an internationally renowned sculptor whose experimental abstract works are displayed in major museums worldwide. Leila Philip is an award-winning writer known for her distinctive work in literary non-fiction. The couple spent 12 months pushing beyond their usual artistic genres to create works that evoke the distinctive rhythms and sense of place of rural northeast Connecticut. Leila wrote poems; Garth made watercolors. The resulting book generates an exciting new sense of how word and image can interact to create new meanings as it explores the ways in which we locate ourselves in a rapidly changing natural world. Renowned composer Shirish Korde has engaged with Evans and Philip to compose music in response to the watercolors as well as to set some of the poems to music. The book will be released with performances of this new art collaboration, which will involve music, image and spoken word. To learn more about this book and collaborative art project, see www.water-rising.com. Or stop by the Silver Circle Gallery in Putnam, where a display about “Water Rising” will be up through Nov. 2. "Water Rising" the title poem has been selected by editors Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenney for inclusion in the exciting new anthology of short literature Brief Encounters forthcoming from Norton, November 2015.
To read a feature story about Water Rising written by arts writer Nancy Weiss, see the new issue of the quarterly regional newspaper The Putnam Traveler, see "Water Rising" pp (14-15)
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