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. 

Calligraphy and Drawings by Thomas Ingmire
Poetry by Robert Sheppard
Musical composition by Clifford Burke
Unique Book

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.

Open Secrets: Ode to Jackson Mac Low
A visual/verbal Book by Thomas Ingmire
San Francisco, 2013 
Unique book
16 x 13 inches, 20 pages

Jackson Mac Low, (1922-2004) was an American Poet known particularly for his experimental approaches to poetry, musical compositions, and performance art.  Inspired in part by John Cage, Mac Low employed systematic chance operations and other similar non-intentional methods in his work. This book is a visual response to the audio performance work titled Open Secrets, by Jackson Mac Low and Anne Tardos. There are ten selections. Most of the works are multi-track voice compositions, while others are instrumental pieces. Specific words are sometimes discernible, but most of the time the voices are used as instruments of sound.

The pages of this book are visual mark making responses the Open Secrets pieces. The instrumental works are depicted with abstract marks, while the voice compositions have been created with layers of hand written and stencil made words. The book itself is an expression of sound. Some of the pages crackle when the pages are turned, others move in silence. 

Suites Song
Poetry by Federico García Lorca
Drawings and calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
San Francisco, 2010
Unique book
7.75 x 10 inches, 28 pages

This book was inspired by my work with Manuel Neri and the poetry of Lorca. Most of the work that I had done with the collaboration had involved, for lack of better words, Lorca's more despairing poetry. I wanted to do something fairly straightforward with a few of his lighter, more playful poems. I chose three poems and balanced them against simple watercolor figure drawings. With the drawings I wanted to capture the directness and simplicity of form seen in Manuel Neri's drawings.

Suites Song is available from Vamp and Tramp Booksellers

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

Diva Fall Jive: Mr. Verb Visits the Tayu
Poetry by Christine Kennedy
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
Book structure by Kyoko Matsunaga
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
4.125 x 10.25 inches, 50 pages

This project was originally a collaboration with Christine Kennedy, but ultimately evolved to include book artist, Kyoko Matsunaga, and composer/musician, Hide Takemoto.  Christine created her poem as a response to an abstract calligraphic image that I had made while listening to music.  She used a delightfully unique  path to get to her poem. Working with the software program Abby Fine Reader, she scanned my "music" sheet  in all four directions with the command to read it in English. This produced several pages of typographic symbols and fragments of words. Those sheets were run through Microsoft Word spell check and resulted in a collection of words, which then became the basis for her poem.

The poem, with its Japanese associations, led to my invitations  to the other two artists. Kyoko created the fan-like structure which she has given the name "water-wheel binding.  It can take many forms and  is as much a sculpture as it is a book.  Images of the book and the poem were then sent to Hide Takemoto, who lives in London. He responded with a composition  titled "Honey Rain." 

The book is currently available from Vamp and Tramp Booksellers.

White Persimmon
Poetry by Alan Halsey 
Calligraphy by Thomas Ingmire 
San Francisco, 2012 
Unique book
8.75 x 10.25 inches, 8 pages
White Persimmon is the title of a poem by Alan Halsey. His poem can be viewed both as a “form” poem and a performance piece. In describing the performance Halsey writes: “Three groups of people speak or sing in whispers, as if telling a secret (they’ve seen something rare & wonderful). The ‘choirs’ perform according to a script. They repeat their words slowly & with pauses, each voice setting its own rhythm (unison is definitely not required), freely improvising pitch etc. The work builds until all the voices are heard. Once this is established the voices gradually subside into silence.” It was this image of the sound building and subsiding that inspired the work.