Many superlative writers responded to a portfolio of my photography for a project called Picture This. I also worked with photographer and film-maker Craig Thomas, on a short film entitled Still Life, containing a selection of these images. Below is my contribution. At first I was reluctant to write a poem and, to be honest, the poem came before the photograph but I hope that the glaring sky with its scudding clouds is an apt partnering for my words.
How Light Falls
In between the spaces, more spaces. How light falls here. But not here. And how shadows have their own words for things even time cannot explain -
Here it ends. Here it begins again. Here it ends. And so on.
We can learn a lot from the language of light. Or those so ill they cannot recall anything other than this, and what breath and blinking means to those who cannot even carry air in their palms.
The cry of coupling foxes sounds worse to me than it does for them, or a cat wanting breakfast. Even the gulls cry is misleading.
Like all the photographs ever taken what looks like an edge, a beginning, a story is nothing more than a wish for something that has passed.
We cannot hold on to much anyway. I learnt this late on in the day.
What sounds like a shout could be a victory, the yell of defeat, or nothing at all.
Light falls here, and here. Darkness, shadow. Everything the air touches is right and true.
