Deeply felt, Max, & the final lines, especially, catch the artist
always still alive...
Doug
On 22-Jan-08, at 12:37 PM, Max Richards wrote:
> Graham Percy, 1938-2008
>
> I hear from London my old friend Graham,
> seldom encountered since our student days,
> has died – leukaemia (in remission, said
> his emails), finally unremitting.
>
> When an artist dies, you think ‘well,
> how much he left behind him.’ – when
> so much of the work is in books,
> ‘how widely available, how good.’
>
> His children’s books everywhere live on,
> helping attune decades of young ones to
> delicate colour, gentle humour, pigs,
> elephants, a new 'Wind in the Willows'.
>
> I just googled 'Hugo the Hippo'! –
> animated in Hungary back in the 70s,
> music by The Osmonds; thanks to YouTube,
> now we can sample it at home!
>
> 'Arthouse', for adults, he showed me in proof,
> bound to become a classic, I reckoned.
> Every room a quiet homage to a favourite
> great artist (where’s my copy?).
>
> His ‘Expatriate New Zealand Artist’
> stands weighed down by the monstrous Kiwi
> he carries on his back: nocturnal, flightless
> emblem* of our country which we left.
>
> We soldiered together there, thanks
> to conscription; put together a student
> annual meant to be ribald, turned out,
> thanks to Graham, most elegant.
>
> He showed me the pavement, just outside
> Green Park tube, where his heart stopped, he died,
> briefly, and had it started again.
> After that a man lives seriously.
>
> In his hospital bed he was seen to frown,
> his hands moving over the sheet.
> Did he need morphine? No, he said,
> he was just working out a drawing.*
>
> 22 January 2008
>
> Max Richards
> Doncaster, Vic
>
> (*obituary by Peter Campbell, The Independent 13 Jan 08)
>
>
Douglas Barbour
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http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
Latest book: Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
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Nothing I'd read
prepared me for a body this unfair.
John Newlove
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