FOREWORD


Very little is known about the Dutch artist, Johannes Vermeer. Over a period of
approximately twenty years the artist produced just thirty six known paintings; some very small (just 8x7 inches) and some of moderate size. The largest of his known works being 63x55 inches. There is some controversy over whether the two smallest paintings are true Vermeers or nineteenth century fakes. One painting (St Praxedis) is a virtual
duplicate of an original 1645 painting of the same name by the Florentine painter, Felice Ficherellian. As such it did not seem to be worthy of a poem, as all of the included
poems are aimed at capturing the spirit of Vermeer in different ways. One painting, `The Concert' is currently missing (stolen in 1990), and of all those paintings attributed to Vermeer, only twenty one have legible signatures. The one on `Diana and Her
Companions' has been worn away during acts of restoration, and not all of the
signatures on the others are thought to be genuine.

POET'S STATEMENT


I bought a small book of Vermeer's paintings at a bargain price. I actually started reading it, and not just looking at the
pictures. I was an art teacher for many years, but I knew very little about Johannes Vermeer. Nor does anyone else it seems. I was fascinated, firstly by the enigmatic nature of the artist and his work and secondly by the stunning beauty of his paintings. Hardly anything is known about Vermeer. He has thirty-five known paintings of which one is stolen, missing from a museum in Boston. Women and more significantly, women wearing pearls is an intriguing aspect of his work that seems to be largely about the place and plight of women in 17th century Holland. I became so absorbed by the artist, his work and his time that I resolved to write a poem about each one of his paintings. In all of the poems the speaker is a character (or in some cases - the character) in the work. This was often the woman or one of the women posing. Sometimes the woman was his wife or his daughter either talking directly to the reader or to Vermeer. Occasionally the speaker is a man. In two of the poems `The
Procuress' and `The Music Lesson', the man in question is Vermeer himself.

From the Book:                                                      MUSSELS ON ROCKS
                                                                                 Street in Delft - c. 1657-58

Mussels on rocks below a fresh tide                                           time is rolled back and back           
that is how I see my street on days like this                              but the light is my light and your light
shutters and doors some open some bolt shut                          this could be where you were born almost
like those shells clammed or parting one by one                      three hundred years later same roofs red brick
                   to taste salt against their orange innards                chimneys and gables reaching for your ancestors

let mussels be oysters                                                                  unhurried
then I may think myself a pearl                                                 like a rock pool between the tides
nestling in the open doorway of this house                               I am a pearl attending my lace
and it jolts I know being a street like your street                      below web spun windows
with clouds like your clouds on a changeable day                               using the light

Vermeer's Corner                                                        quietly breathing
is an 56 page hand-stitched                                                  among gray green and red anemones
paper book with spine.                                                           where two little shrimps hug the sandy floor
£6.99                                                                                 and a small fish breathes water
                                                                                                        in its narrow crevice