A SLEEPING GARDEN STILL GROWS is a small publication of my ‘kitchen table’ works on paper, amongst several poems. Painted at a time of low energy, every interaction was heightened. Each book is a slight variation. Hand bound, hand stamped, each with a piece of handmade camomile paper, grown from seed.
Designed by
@matt.cunliffe
Edited by Dorothea Busby
Printed by F.E. Burman in the United Kingdom
Set in Spyre Thin, Book, and Book Italic by
@nblett
Hand-bound by
@matt.cunliffe and
@smorczewski.s (and kind helpers!)
First edition of 45 copies
Handmade paper insert using dried camomile flowers
2025
Section from My Camomile Lawn:
On a weekend in June, my lawn exploded with a splattering of tiny flowers. Daisy-like, cone-shaped, golden-centred, with a collar of white. They danced on their light stems and smelt faintly of apple. I picked them, in slow quiet ceremony, carefully plucking their heads from their legs until the stalks stood alone.
Summer left and rain fell, sweetening the air. It beaded on the wilted leaves and held steady on the headless camomile. Like wounded soldiers, the browning stems began to crumple. They spilled out of the bed, slumping lazily, grubby faces in the dirt, until they dissolved back into the rich brown batter of soil.
It was a plant in flux. There was a romance to its impermanence and its cyclicality. I considered the yellow whispers of pollen. Unnoticeable yet abundant while the lawn flowered, and the precious sustenance of natural life. As the male seed of the flower, pollen is as potent as it is fragile. It’s ephemeral in existence, but also eternal and perhaps that is somehow the same.
