Climates

In this new sequence of poems Ruth Fainlight captures the changing moods of an English summer, from late spring through the long midsummer days into autumn. Climates is the response of a poet coming from the city into rural isolation. The poems catch her heightened awareness of the natural climates of summer, charged with a deeper, more personal sense of her own nature. The collection is illustrated with prints by Ki Batei (1734 - 1810), one of the Japanese scholar-painters of the 'literati' movement. These artists stressed the kinship between painting, calligraphy and poetry in the form of haiga - the kind of drawing that was half decoration and half illustration of the verse. Ki Batei's master was Yosa Buson, the 'second Pillar of Haiku' after Basho, and one of Japan's greatest artists. Now out of print in this edition, the poems are reprinted in Ruth Fainlight's New & Collected Poems (2010).