Divining the Stone by Scott Lawrance with Gregg Simpson

Diving the Stone is a testament to the endurance of the seven decade friendship and collaboration of poet Scott Lawrance and artist-musician Gregg Simpson. In the two “hermetic texts” therein, they re-imagine Tarot deck and desert landscape with surrealistic vigor, forging new pathways through the ekphrastic tradition.

Surrealism—a permanent readiness for the Marvellous

— Suzanne Cesaire, Martiniquan theorist of negritude and surrealism

The surrealists know that the surreal is in the real, just as the mage knows that the invisible is in the visible and the alchemist knows that the infinite is to be found in the finite—and the Great Work consists of its extraction.

— Patrick Leptit, French scholar of esoteric traditions and surrealism

ths book sz  n shows  sew manee pleysyurs uplifts  pleysyurs  openings  yu will refer 2  n remembr 4evr  thsis a reelee great book  uv drawings nd words  all  illuminaysyuns  briteness

— bill bissett, kanadian poet savant

This book is a marvellous series of contrasts, between image and text, form and freedom, sense and subconsciousness, balanced by the presence of both. If you look hard at any one element, the whole thing will disappear. Instead, choose to enter this dream and embrace its eruptive play in all directions.

— Gregory Betts, author of Finding Nothing: The VanGardes

Scott Lawrance's last day job was clinical counsellor, contemporary necromancer. His prose can be discovered in the archives of Raincoast Chronicles and the GTEC Reader. He once co-edited the magazines Raven and Circular Causation. His seven texts of verse include Names of Thunder, Should Stick to Carrying Water, In the House of the Great Blue Heron, playg daze, and Little Guys (with Gregg) shiver like jade horses beside the river. When not engaged in the facilitation of Wilderness Vigils, he hovers at the Western gate of the Salish Sea with a Phoenix feather in his hand, preparing to pass his library of rain, clouds, oceans and forests to his nine honorable grandchildren.

Bowen Island artist, Gregg Simpson, has been active in visual art since the mid-1960s. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Canada, the U.S., France, the U.K., Italy, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Chile, His work is included in over 100 museum, university and private collections in Europe, Asia, North and South America.

In 2000 Simpson exhibited in Tuscany at the Fortezza di Montalcino, a 14th Century castle. This exhibition, entitled A New Arcadia, was also the subject of a BRAVO TV documentary which was broadcast across Canada. In Paris, Simpson’s work from the 1970’s was published by two renowned art historians who were both colleagues of the Surrealist Group’s founder, André Breton. The first, José Pierre, included the artist in his landmark book, L’Univers Surréaliste, (Editions Somogy, 1983) and in 1999, Sarane Alexandrian put Simpson’s work in his periodical, Supériore Inconnu.

In 2020 he was selected for an exhibition and book, Surrealism Beyond Borders at the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Tate Modern, London. In 2025 he was given his second solo exhibition at the Museo Eugenio F. Granell in Santiago de Compostela where his work is included in their permanent collection alongside all the major artists of the Surrealist Movement.

Paperback: $15. ISBN: 978-1-300-00254-3

Forthcoming in 2025.