God's Little Artist

‘These poems see Gwen John as she would wish to be seen, in the clear light of her art. In crisp and memorable vignettes, they grasp the coherence that runs through a life of changes. Catching her particular blend of the cool and the passionate, of physical immediacy, discipline and distance, Sue Hubbard’s writing gets her whole.’

Philip Gross

“Hubbard writes exquisitely of colour and its connections to spirituality… her skills as a novelist come to the fore as the poems animate John’s character and (often dire) circumstances convincingly… God’s Little Artist… may go some way towards ensuring [John’s] life and work receive the attention they deserve.”

Sarah Westcott, Artemis

‘Like Gwen John’s drawings in ‘Blue’, the poems in Sue Hubbard’s inspired sequence often ‘speak by quiet suggestion’. Underlying the poetry is Hubbard’s knowledge of a visual artist’s processes, and she is able to penetrate the world of colour, for instance, and of ‘things’. With apparent ease, she conjures Gwen John’s sensibility. An immersive and revelatory reading experience.’

Moniza Alvi

‘Love is lonelier than solitude. Losing her mother at eight and running wild on Tenby beach hardly prepared this frail but determined Welsh child for passing sleepless nights in unrequited love for Rodin, who cared only for his art, and drawing in ‘the clean ligh t/ of morning’ while remembering ‘those Pembroke fields’. Sue Hubbard’s poems on this often anguished life delicately evoke the haunted atmosphere of Gwen John’s own wonderful art.’

Ruth Padel

Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist and art critic. She has published five collections of poetry, most recently ‘Radium Dreams’ (Women’s Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge), which is a collaboration with the artist Eileen Cooper RA, inspired by the remarkable life of Marie Curie. Sue has also published three novels with her fourth, ‘Flatlands’, was published by Pushkin Press in June 2023. Sue’s poems have been published and broadcast widely, including on Radio 3, Radio 4 and RTE. As an art critic she has written for Time Out, The Independent, The New Statesman and The London Magazine and is a senior writer for Artlyst. A collection of her art writings ‘Adventures in Art’ was published by Damien Hirst’s Other Criteria.

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