Garden of Words can now be ordered online at Chapters Indigo.
Images in a poetry book often serve as illustrations for the poems, but this is not the case with Garden of Words. In an unusual departure from the norm, we see words illuminate artwork created long before the poems were written. Pnina Granirer has done this before, in the award-winning limited-edition book The Trials of Eve.
Garden of Words consists of five chapters of short poems that deal with thoughts and feelings brought about by the simple reality of living. Alongside her vibrant surrealist paintings, these vignettes explore the joy of dancers’ bodies in movement, the sculpted stones of the Gulf Islands and the shadow of a new plague, each expressing Pnina’s wish to plant a ‘garden of words’ in her field of colours.
What People Are Saying
“Garden of Words weaves together the art and poetry of Pnina Granirer in a testament to an incredible life lived. One shaped, weathered, etched, and eroded by forces far greater than ourselves, much like the enigmatic landscape of Gabriola Island where the artist found much solace and inspiration. From the outset her poetry serves as the warp holding tension and the framework of her life, while her visual art acts as the weft, drawn through, over and under the warp to turn these threads into the fabric which defines her life. Pnina’s poetry and visual art dance across the pages as a pas de deux opening with Pnina age ten through a period of quiet contemplation and connection before culminating in a beautiful and touching tribute to her late husband Edmond Granirer (Eddy). This poignant collection serves as an important reminder of the tenuous nature of our own existence, the incredible power of art, love and community, and the awe-inspiring mystery, beauty and hope we can all find when we take the time to reconnect with nature and ourselves.” — Paul F. Crawford, Director/Curator, Penticton Art Gallery
“This collection of poems encompasses a range of subject matters, offering personal reflections that are variously joyous, sharp and heartbreaking. Interspersed with Granirer’s writing are artworks spanning many years of painting. Time collapses within these pages. They offer a window into a vivid life lived in extraordinary times, and a woman enchanted with the world around her.” — George Harris, Curator/Director Two Rivers Gallery, Prince George, BC
“I speak with paint and brush” writes the author of this beautiful collection. Granirer’s intermingling of poetry and visual art gives us a profound glimpse into two visions. In one, we see the mysterious yet inanimate stones in the painting. In another, with the buoyant sea ever present, the stones come alive through words. ‘I sit alone and listen to the whispering of stones,’ she writes. About the sea, she speaks of how ‘Giants’ hands pull back the waves.’ She doesn’t shout but almost whispers the powerful themes of war, plague, sadness, joy and memory, questioning the human condition with delicacy and compassion. — Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, author of Out of the Dark and Mouth of Truth: Buried Secrets
“Artist Pnina Granirer is also a poet who has written verse since 1945, when the 10-year-old expressed her joy at the end of WW2. The poems range in space from Romania to Israel to Canada, and include many vignettes recorded with a painter’s eye and a haiku-like intensity. Some are vividly illustrated with images selected from her long career in visual art. Among my favourites were descriptions of a racoon washing its paws, a glass of sangria in Spain, and eroded sandstones rocks in the Gulf Islands. The book ends with a moving elegy for her recently deceased husband. Readers will find much to treasure in this rich selection from the work of a talented poet-painter.” — Graham Good, Professor Emeritus of English, UBC. Translator of Rilke’s Late Poetry and Goethe’s Poems.