Picture Poems

Picture poems – that’s what I think these are best called – they are short poems in dialogue with a photo I have taken. I started off trying to make the words fit into a haiku/haiga format but found that was quite a challenge and detracted from the dialogue aspect that I have found very enjoyable.

So here is the first one – the Fairy Tale in the Clouds – composed five or so years ago during the hard COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa. The house was peeping out of the clouds as they drifted across the distant hillsides in upper Hogsback: it looked like something from out of a fairy tale.

The second one – the Ostrich – is the most recent. I photographed it pecking away in the bush and then it reared up sinuously and gave me this look. That’s what inspired the poem. It was taken when we were in Addo Elephant National Park last month.

The Night Owl was inspired by listening to an African Wood Owl one night in the Orchard Gallery. It was calling gently into the silence and I could just imagine the other wildlife listening. The picture was taken shortly after on a dark and rainy day in the Arboretum, Hogsback.

The last picture was also taken very recently, at Cape St Francis, when we were fortunate to get a viewing of the whales breaching on a very windy day. The poem was inspired by the zest of such enormous animals leaping out of the ocean.