At Mid Wales Art Centre, my piece Shadowland was shown as part of an exchange between visual artists and poets called ‘Inspired’. I was thrilled that Jackie Biggs chose my piece and wrote the following poem in response to it, and that it reflected my feelings and intentions so incredibly well. Jackie is a published poet living in Wales. Her blog is, incidentally, called ‘The spaces in between’.
Leaves and leavings
Her memories are fragments
taken from a wreckage of smashed mirrors,
pieced back together
so that her recollections
are only reflections of each other.
Misremembered pieces
imitate but falsify
and she no longer understands
that what she recalls
are only distorted images.
Layers of shadow on shadow
show that nothing is what it seems –
not in the past or present.
She weaves the spectres
of mis-shapen memories into tapestry
makes a new collage
layer on layer
angular fragment on fragment
and she looks through
a window, but sees
into a twisted looking glass,
her view veiled
by an apparition of herself.
Still she sees leaves,
even among winter bare trees…
leaves and phantoms of leaves,
remembrance of leavings;
and he is there, his silhouette
down there among the gravestones.
She watches where he looks
but whatever he remembers,
whatever he sees,
his memories and recollections
are obscured by light.