Hi! We’re Hugh and Ellie, the co-creators of Line by Line, a beautiful book of poems and drawings. Hugh is a poet who tried to keep it quiet for half a century. Ellie is an artist who has never denied it.
Hugh’s poems chart the journey from teenager to ageing father through life’s paradoxical highs and lows. Growing up and growing old. Love and loss. Fun and profundity. Science and spirituality. Fear of going mad and joy at becoming a dad.
Ellie’s exquisite pencil drawings weave their own mysterious world through the book, both enhancing and resonating with the poems in a common creative language. The resulting balladry between words and images is – we think – magical.
It’s been quite an adventure, turning our creative collaboration into a beautiful book. We had to learn about the whole production process from editing and bleeds to bindings and tailbands. We’ve shared some of what we learned about book publishing under the Blog on this website.
The book we received back from the printers is all we had hoped for. The design is essential – less is more – with a sense of space and harmony. The edition is a high quality hardback with sewn binding and a rich orange cloth cover, wrapped in a minimalist black and white dust jacket designed by Ellie.
We hope that our book will inspire others in their own creative collaborative projects. When Hugh was twelve, he was given an extraordinary book of Japanese Haiku poems illustrated with Haiga paintings called A Net of Fireflies. It’s still one of his most treasured possessions. If you believe that books should be beautiful and inspiring objects made with love, then please purchase a copy of the book.
Hugh & Ellie
Line by Line 