So began 'A Small Box of River', a new artist's book by Robert Powell and Jake Attree. Inspired by a series of walks along the rivers Ouse and Foss over the past year, York-born artist Jake Attree and prize-winning poet Robert Powell have produced a series of drawings and poems that attempts to capture the appearance and also the spirit of the two rivers.
 
Says Jake Attree: "We were very conscious of the power of the rivers and their importance in the lives of local people". Attree, one of Yorkshire's most accomplished senior artists, was born and brought up in York, while Canadian-born Powell had recently moved to the city. "Jake wanted to revisit some of the places he grew up in," he says, "while I was keen to explore my new home ground. Rather than wander haphazardly, we decided to let the rivers Foss and Ouse guide us..."
 
Attree's drawings delicate yet powerful renderings of the rivers' visual qualities, while Powell's poems alternate between pondering their shifting moods and telling stories about people and events from the past...a man who wins a fortune at the Races, a young woman daredevil teetering on a bridge, the ghostly footsteps of railway workers. The book explores, expresses, and ultimately combines the relationship and interplay between the written word and the visual, the different tools of the artist and writer.