Way to the West

Publishing as an industry is obsessed with new – books yet to come out… but what about the brilliant books that have already been published? Each month we spotlight a different author whose book was published more than a year ago, which you might be yet to meet… This month we hear from Andy and Vally Miller about the brilliant Way to the West…

Shuffling the Shelves: Way to the West by Andy and Vally Miller

Collaborating on Way to the West

Our book, Way to the West, combines Vally’s watercolour paintings of scenes from the west of Cornwall with accompanying original poems by me. And, for a married couple who can’t even agree on what to watch on the television most evenings, it was quite a shock to find ourselves collaborating more and more effortlessly on this joint project!

The book’s origins lie in that strange period of late 2020, when we had all been unsettled and disorientated by the Covid pandemic. After a seemingly endless period of being allowed out of doors for only an hour a day and severely restricted in whom we could associate with, the government relaxed these restraints and we dived into the Internet seeking a week away before a next set of likely limitations was imposed.

There was little available, but we were staggered to find that a little tin miner’s cottage just outside St Just still had one or two vacancies. All our usual reservations, our checks and enquiries, went out the window and we slapped a deposit on it there and then.

Thus, we found ourselves, in mid-October, still wearing face masks, still avoiding indoor spaces and other people, and wandering the wonderful world of West Penwith’s cliffs, bays and beaches. The strangeness of this period seemed somehow to give added salience to a whole set of sensory experiences – colours, sounds, the air and wind – and to the memories that the area held for us both.

Vally always paints on holidays – and at home – while I, at first, contented myself with posting selected photographs on my Facebook page along with a few descriptive phrases. I usually need to feel ‘unsettled’ to write poetry, but Vally’s emerging set of paintings, the remoteness of the cottage, the hugeness of the natural panoramas, the history hidden in the folds of the land and my memories of lost friends and of climbing and walking in Cornwall, all contributed to kick starting a writing spree.

Quite quickly, the two strands of the book began to come together and a deliberate collaboration arose. At the end of the week, we had a dozen or so combined pieces that were beginning to reach a standard with which we were satisfied. We returned home to continue working on these – and to immediately secure a booking at the cottage for the following year!

By that second October, we were convinced that we could develop enough material to constitute a worthwhile book. The emerging paintings became more and more a stimulus for the writing and, more occasionally, first drafts of developing poems suggested subject matter for a new watercolour. This joint effort now became more efficiently focused and our production rate increased.

It took a couple of years in total to develop and streamline the collaborative creative endeavour that eventually culminated in this very satisfying outcome – Renard’s publication of Way to the West.

The jointly agreed television viewing schedule, however, is proving a harder nut to crack!

– Andy and Vally Miller, September 2026