Leading the Cranes Home

A selection of Chinese poems translated by Arthur Waley with woodblock images by Ralph Kiggell

This collaboration between Japanese printmaking techniques and European letterpress has been a fascinating experience for us and the result, we believe, is an extremely interesting and beautiful book.

The selection of the twenty-four poems is from 170 Poems and from Chinese Poems, two books which the Orientalist, Arthur Waley, translated in the first half of the twentieth century. For this book, poems were chosen that were both beautiful to read and which also inspired Ralph Kiggell to produce images as woodblock prints . . . animals, plants, landscapes, moods and atmospheres.

Given the extraordinary immediacy and relevance to today's world of many of the poems, it is easy to forget that they were written between a thousand and three thousand years ago, in another country and in a different language.

The evening river is level and motionless - The spring colours just open to their full. Suddenly a wave carries the moon away And the tidal water comes with its freight of stars.

Waley's translated Chinese poems were perfect. They had created a stir when the first collection was published in 1918. While Waley did not try to translate the rhythms and rhymes of the original poems, the strange metres and 'sprung rhythms' he devised and the apparent simplicity and accessibility of the poems became influential in modern English poetry.

Editions & Inscriptions

Copies of the Main Edition are Numbered and signed by the artist.

Copies of the Special Edition are Each copy of the book placed in a drop-back box together with a portfolio of 3 images that also appear in the book and a fourth which was designed and cut specially for this edition. All these 'Special' images were printed (on Japanese paper, with water-based inks and by hand, using a baren) by the artist himself. Each is individually signed and numbered I-X.