Last November we popped up to Yelverton to visit a local event for artists and makers from the Tamar Valley. There were quite a few stalls with different types of artwork that I really liked, one such being the work of artist and writer Peter Ursem. As well as his wonderful lithograph prints of various locations in and around Dartmoor and the Tamar Valley he also had a few prints and cards of some poetry and copies of his books – a children’s adventure story trilogy that I really must read sometime and a small volume called ‘The Bigger Picture’ written under his pen-name Petrus Ursem. I got chatting with Peter about is work and immediately felt a strong mental connection – we talked about the process of writing and where ideas come from and he told me about how TBP was a collection of short fables written in similar form to those of the Master of Fables, Aesop, with a group of animals interacting to discuss and explore different pieces of wisdom and thought. I was immediately hooked by his description and purchased a copy of TBP which I have been reading on and off since then – one fable (of forty in total) each morning.
Many of the fables in The Bigger Picture take a word or short phrase and then have the different animals (a rather odd mix including a crocodile, an owl a peacock, a worm, a bull, a bee and others along with a few non-animal characters like Cloud) riffing on it as they meet up and go about their daily business, always uncovering some little nugget of wisdom along the way. To give an idea there are fables called ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’, ‘Point of View’ and ‘No Half Measures’. Talking with Peter I was interested to hear that partly this construction stemmed from him originally being from The Netherlands and so being intrigued by certain turns of phrase in English.
I finished the last fable ‘Being You’ last week and as I did so I found myself wishing that during my first readings I had made some notes to capture a few quotes and some of the glimpses of wisdom the fables contained. At first, I was a little disappointed to reflect that most of what I had read had slipped straight out of my head but then I realised that this was actually a bonus… because I have now promised myself that at some point in the not too distant future I will read The Bigger Picture through again, with pencil and notebook in hand, and be inspired and enchanted once more.
Tim O'Hare 