Tamar Yoseloff (Ed.)

Search for a word or phrase in this book …

Biographical note:  Tamar Yoseloff was born in the U.S. in 1965. Her first collection, Sweetheart (Slow Dancer Press, 1998) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation and the winner of the Aldeburgh Festival Prize. She received a New Writers’ Award from London Arts for her second collection, Barnard’s Star (Enitharmon Press, 2004). In 2005 she was Writer in Residence at Magdalene College, Cambridge, as part of their Year in Literature Festival. She is the Programme Co-ordinator and a tutor for The Poetry School. She divides her time between London and Suffolk, and is currently working on her first novel.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714209
ISBN:  9781844714209
Author:  Tamar Yoseloff
Title:  A Room to Live In
Series:  Anthologies
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  30-Nov-07
Extent:  128pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  14 mm
Weight:  192 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 26.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  A Room to Live In is a celebration of a unique place in British art. Kettle’s Yard was the Cambridge home of Jim Ede, the visionary collector and curator, who opened his doors to generations of students and art lovers. To mark Kettle’s Yard’s first 50 years, and its lasting legacy, this anthology brings together an extraordinary group of writers, all of whom have been influenced by the house and its remarkable collection. This anthology is essential for anyone who has visited Kettle’s Yard or admires its artists, such as Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Alfred Wallis.

Edited by Tamar Yoseloff, with a Foreword by Michael Harrison, Director of Kettle’s Yard, and an Introduction by Tamar Yoseloff.

Contributors include: Alan Bennett, Anne Berkeley, Meredith Bowles, Richard Burns, Michael Bywater, Claire Crossman, Tony Curtis, Fred D’Aguiar, Jane Duran, Elaine Feinstein, John Greening, David Hare, Jeremy Hooker, Sue Hubbard, Martha Kapos, John Kinsella, Rod Mengham, John Mole, Sharon Morris, Ruth Padel, Ian Patterson, Jacob Polley, Andrea Porter, Lawrence Sail, Fiona Sampson, Sarah Skinner, Ali Smith, Robert Vas Dias, Susan Watson, Neil Wenborn, Tamar Yoseloff.

Table of contents:
Foreword by Michael Harrison
Introduction by Tamar Yoseloff
Anne Berkeley: Monday
Fiona Sampson: The Fire Glaze
Alan Bennett: from Untold Stories
Jane Duran: Objects in Kettle’s Yard
Richard Burns: from ‘Manual’
Martha Kapos: The Geode
John Greening: Glass
John Mole: Aquamarine
Ian Patterson: Kettle’s Yard
Neil Wenborn: In Memory of Alfred Wallis
Clare Crossman: Fiddle-fish and Wave at Kettle’s Yard
Fred D’Aguiar: Dreamboat
Tamar Yoseloff: The Artist
Michael Bywater: Kettle’s Yard
Robert Vas Dias: After ‘The Island (with constant chaos)’
Tony Curtis: Three Personages, Barbara Hepworth at Kettle’s Yard
Andrea Porter: Three Haiku for a Saint
Ruth Padel: White Buddha at Kettle’s Yard
Meredith Bowles: One Summer
Susan Watson: A Bowl by Lucie Rie
Jeremy Hooker: On Looking into A Way of Life
Jacob Polley" Stones on a Windowsill
John Kinsella: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Me
Sue Hubbard: Migrations
Tamar Yoseloff: The Venetian Mirror
Lawrence Sail: The Challenge
Elaine Feinstein: Kettle’s Yard
Sarah Skinner: The House
Fred D’Aguiar: Wartime Aubade
Rod Mengham: The Real Avant-Garde
Sue Hubbard: New Year
Ali Smith: Seven Visits to Kettle’s Yard
Sharon Morris: Kettle’s Yard House
David Hare: Amy’s View of Kettle’s Yard
Lawrence Sail: Edenic
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (978 KB)

Excerpt from book:  

Kettle’s Yard began its life when, in 1956, H.S. ‘Jim’ Ede came to Cambridge, looking for ‘a great house’ where he and his wife, Helen, could live and where he could introduce his ideas about living spaces, and the role that art could play in them, to successive generations of students.


Ede had set out wanting to become an artist, but at a young age had found himself effectively the first curator of modern art at the Tate Gallery. It was during those years in the 1920s and ‘30s that he formed the basis of the collection that was to become Kettle’s Yard, largely through friendships with artists such as David Jones, Ben and Winifred Nicholson, and Christopher Wood, but also through the acquisition of the estate of Sophie Brzeska which made him the prime holder of the work of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.

For twenty years he and Helen lived first in Morocco and then in France before returning to England to fulfil his ‘quixotic scheme’. Cambridge could not provide the stately home he sought and instead he adopted a row of all-but derelict cottages nestling beneath St Peter’s Church. In little time the cottages had been remodelled as a single house and Jim had begun to open his door to afternoon visitors.

The Edes lived here until 1973 before retiring to Edinburgh. In the meantime Kettle’s Yard had become an institution of the University and Jim’s ambitions for a great house, where music would also play a part, had been achieved with the addition of Sir Leslie Martin’s extension. Since then, Kettle’s Yard has continued to grow with an expanding exhibition gallery as an essential foil to the house and there are plans for an education wing to come.

But the house, itself, remains as Jim Ede’s unique creation, continuing to enchant and inspire visitors, con?tinuing to ask questions about where and how we live. Periodically we ask artists to bring new work into the house, to introduce new observations and pose new questions. Here we have an anthology of prose and poetry to do the same.

We are deeply grateful to all these writers who have responded with such generosity and creativity to our invitation, to Chris Hamilton-Emery at Salt for so readily agreeing to publish, and to Tamar Yoseloff who has literally given herself over the last months to compiling and editing this rich tribute to a much loved place.

Michael Harrison
Director, Kettle’s Yard

Unpublished endorsement :  You know those dreams where a door opens into further rooms in a familiar house, rooms you never knew were there? Kettle’s Yard opens up like that, and so does this anthology in its honour. Freedom, intimacy, space and the unexpected are all realised in the poems and reflections. The book is filled with pleasure.

Dame Gillian Beer