Poems by David Annwn, Ezra Pound, and Li Po
Calligraphy and Drawings by Thomas Ingmire
San Francisco, CA,  2013
Unique Book
6.5 x 8.6  inches,  24 pages

2015 marks the 130th anniversary of Ezra Pound’s birth and the 100th anniversary of his beginning to write THE CANTOS. David Annwn, with his poem, “Going Up to Sun Terrace, pays tribute to these anniversaries and to the influence Pound has had on his own work. His poem also makes a link to Li Po, the famous Chinese calligrapher/poet who in 744 wrote a poem with the same title. The foldout spread in this book is a re-creation of Li Po’s extraordinary calligraphy of the poem. The work is the only surviving example of Po’s calligraphy. The River Merchant’s Wife, translated from Chinese by Pound, embraces the tie between the three poets. This is a new work in progress. There will be one unique book and a printed edition of 50 copies available in June, 2015. 

Asters of Risk, 
a collaboration between Thomas Ingmire,
Dorothy Sharrar, and David Annwn
San Francisco,  2013
Unique book
7.75 x 11.25 inches, 26 pages

The name of the book comes from the title of a poem written by David Annwn. The  project at the outset was a long distance collaboration between Dorothy Sharrar and me. Dorothy lives in Portland and my studio is in San Francisco. We have, for a number of years, had a shared interest in language and calligraphy and decided to express this in a joint book making project. I began the Asters book by creating the first two pages which I then mailed to Dorothy. She responded with a third page drawing and returned the pages. I followed with the next page drawing and we continued on the path or chain of alternative responses. Dorothy created initial pages for a second book which followed the same process.

After about a year our mutual back and forth collaboration ended and we each keep one of the books. I looked at my book from time to time, wrestling with the feeling that the work was somehow incomplete. It occurred to me one day to contact David Annwn, a poet with whom I have often worked, to see if he would be willing to use the images as inspiration for a poem. He responded by writing the poem Asters of Risk. With his response he wrote, "As I looked at and lived with Dorothy's and your work the idea of flashes of creativity 'coming through from other levels began to form. My poem takes up with the idea of discontinuities or gaps. Asters are both stars and flowers." 

After receiving David's poem (which David had written in his own hand) I worked back into the original book and introduced drawing into David's poetry pages.

Out of The Air 
Poetry by David Annwn 
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
11.5 x 15.75 inches, 36 pages
This book records an experimental research with the British poet David Annwn. “Reactive, correlative or reciprocal successive ekphrasis” is the term that he proposes as a description of the work. It is a process by which a writer creates one text in relation to an image, the visual artist then creates a new image in relation to that text, and the writer then makes another text in relation to the second image, and so on, in a chain or path of responses. 

The sequence in this book was initiated by a non-verbal calligraphic image (page 2 in the book) by Ingmire. Annwn made a spontaneous poetic response that has been written by Ingmire on the facing page 1. The back and forth process yielded seven poems by Annwn that are coupled with Ingmire’s calligraphic responses. The book also includes a number of alternative images and sketches. Additional information about collaborations between Ingmire and Annwn can be found at :
http://lyndondavies.co.uk/w/1768/david-annwn-flying-through-poetry-collaborations-with/

At the completion of the project, John Cowey, a musician/composer friend of David's was inspired to create this composition.

Out of the Air is available at Vamp and Tramp Booksellers