Call for Work: “All becomes art”: Joan Eardley Centenary Collection

“All becomes art, and as if she was incensed
By the painter’s brush the sea growls up
In a white flood.” – Edwin Morgan, ‘Flood Tide’

New pieces of creative writing in response to the paintings and drawings of Joan Eardley are currently invited for an anthology to celebrate the centenary of her birth in 2021. The deadline for work is 28th June 2021. 

An artist of intensity and deep formal sensitivity, the work of Joan Eardley (1921-1963) resonates with themes of social conscience, ecological awareness, materiality of paint, compulsion and the everyday. As Edwin Morgan’s poem ‘Flood Tide’ suggests, Eardley’s work is full of tension, full of passion, evocative of elemental, aesthetic and emotional turbulence and attunement to social inequalities. 

Her handling of paint is deeply textural and gestural: her brushstrokes throb, bristle, refuse, explode, vibrate and adhere. In a work such as ‘Children and Chalked Wall II’, the texture of the paint itself is somewhere between chalky and gluey, giving the impression of contingency, potential and a moment stuck in time. The children in the foreground-left emerge as if forged from the dream-like entanglements and collaged fragments of the scribbled graffiti behind them. In ‘Boy in a Red Jumper’, a pastel, the vibrancy of the colour in the pink of the boy’s cheeks is hyper-saturated, a rainbow glow that feels impossibly vivid. Likewise in ‘Catterline in Winter’ (1963), an apparent stillness in the matt grey sky is offset by the gentle incline of the dwellings which feel their practically falling into one another against the craggy fencing and scrub. Whether its attention is rural or urban, Eardley’s work is an acknowledgement and affirmation of life, however fraught.

Submissions in any form are welcomed (e.g. poetry, hybrid, experimental, fiction, art writing, criticism, memoir). Where appropriate, you are encouraged to identify which painting or aspect of Eardley’s work you are responding to in an email accompanying the submission. Individual submissions should be less than 7000 words. The deadline for work is 28th June 2021. 

Eardley’s work can be seen in many collections, including:
National Galleries of Scotland
Hunterian Art Gallery 
The Tate 
Kelvingrove Gallery 
Lillie Gallery

The anthology is edited by Colin Herd and Sam Small will be published in 2021. Submissions will be accepted to [email protected] 

POETRY COLLECTIONS

We publish anthologies, poetry collections and novellas.

If you would like your poetry to be considered for publication please submit two poems via email
with your pen name as the subject.

Submissions for novella’s and short fiction are currently closed, follow us on twitter @spec_books.

We try to respond to submissions within 6 months.
Thank you in advance for your patience.
[email protected]