Etching and poetry are divergent art forms, but in the work of this issue's cover artist, Juliette Teague, they work complementarily. Many of her etchings are named after and inspired by poems. Both media are steeped in traditional methodologies, with technical challenges, where attention to detail and precise editing can make all the difference to meaning and outcome. Poetry and etching both consist of component details - words, punctuation and spaces or marks, shades and scribbles - and these details build to form lines of text, lines of image, which Juliette puts to playful use in landscape-based works.

The title of this issue's cover image, Never May the Fruit Be Plucked, is taken from Edna St Vincent Millay's poem 'Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough'. Juliette's love of line as a construct is immediately apparent in the overhanging tree which dominates the work. Rendered in a rich blue to reflect the intense colours of shade found in certain woodland clearings and borders, the trees and their branches arc across the picture, drawing the eye from left to right. The strong shapes define the picture yet allow glimpses of the sunlit clearing beyond - details of what lies deeper into the picture, sketchy, tantalising. The title conveys the sense of unfulfilled promise and transitory pleasures, but this additional layer of meaning, like many within a poem, is only clear to those with a questioning approach.

Other works based on poems convey a simpler, more ...