When poem meets image

Andrew Lambirth talks to Douglas Dunn and Norman Ackroyd about their latest collaboration

Illustrated books are one of the glories of a library. Looking over my own shelves I find assorted delights ranging from The Story of My Heart, the unorthodox vision of the naturalist Richard Jefferies fittingly partnered with woodcuts by Ethelbert White, to David Gascoyne’s poems decorated rather sombrely by Graham Sutherland, and ‘The Traveller’ by Walter de la Mare, accompanied by colourful landscapes by John Piper. The pairings of writer and artist are often intriguing: Wyndham Lewis and Naomi Mitchison, William Beckford and Marion Dorn, Samuel Johnson and Edward Bawden. One of my favourites is an anthology called The Poet’s Eye, selected by Geoffrey Grigson and illustrated superbly by John Craxton. A more modest project altogether is the charming set of pamphlets produced in two series by Faber & Faber in the 1920s and 1930s and then in the 1950s, called the Ariel Poems.