These short poems, one for every day of the month, wry, clever, funny, evocative and occasionally heart-stopping, were Eleanor Cooke’s farewell to a much loved friend. In his twenty four small engravings, Peter Reddick caught the poet’s moods, in charming domestic vignettes, or in the vibrant reality of the stronger poems. The poems and the engravings are printed on separate pages, to give full prominence to both.

“The choices – of engravings, of page size, of the nearly square format, of the colour of the type, of the joyous silver boards and scarlet spine, above all perhaps of the decision to put the engravings first, separately and before their poems – can only have been made after much thought and intuitive sympathy. They give a loving gesture its proper dignity and have resulted in a book that lifts the heart.” - Simon Brett in Multiples.

Eleanor Cooke has published three collections of poetry, the latest with Jonathan Cape. She has worked as a creative writing lecturer for many years and served on Arts Council of England advisory groups. She is an award-winning broadcaster, and has written for the stage.

Working as a wood engraver/book illustrator and printmaker, Peter Reddick illustrated books for The Folio Society, the Limited Editions Club of New York, The Reader’s Digest and other publishers. His other fields of work included watercolours, screen prints and colour woodcuts. He exhibited with the Society of Wood Engravers and the West of England Academy.