Burning Bright

‘The photograph, which expresses non-being through its perception of chance, is also--and it is also unique in this--what puts us in the unmediated presence of beings other than ourselves: in the presence of their presence.'
From Poetry and Photography Yves Bonnefoy
Trans. Chris Turner

My collaborative work with photographer Aj Wilkinson was published by Maytree Press on 30th June 2023. It had an earlier incarnation as an exhibition (‘Sleeping in the Middle’) at Open Eye Gallery in 2018. There is just a fragment of my unpublished poem – ‘The Letting Go’ – in the book inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem 372. The complete poem was conceived for the exhibition, to be heard. You can listen to it here: The Letting Go.

The full text of the poem is published below.

The Letting Go

and the day after
in resistance to evocations of great
sorrow we test pain 
through new objects, a
spoon sometimes or formal
letter or toy to weigh the feeling
like ink in a reservoir, it comes

out in blots and stains, the
marks balancing at the end of your nerves
insisting that you sit
rather than flee in a ceremonious
manner, funereal like
gargoyles overlooking medieval tombs.

                  *

As I remember we were
freezing in the high rooms of the old Monkgate flat, like old
persons rehearsing a winter marriage, I
recollect the music you played, its warmth in the room
the rehearsals and repetitions,
snow - filling the roof below our kitchen window.

First we held on to each other until the
chill of the season entered your heart
then I slept through dark nights in a 
stupor until your green bones stretched,
then you remembered the path and the way,
the pilgrimage you had to make, the urgency of
letting me stay behind, your insistence:
"go before I start to wish you dead."