White December

This is likely to be my last post until the New Year, so it seemed timely to share some seasonal, snowy winter scenes.

We are cold and white in this part of Britain, and though the snow has thawed a little since first fall, it's still pretty deep and expansive, as you can see for yourself.

It's definitely winter here, though the barbed wire does look like it's flowering.

"snow becomes diamond/ glittering with fresh life" from Life Magic by J.S.Watts

Walking Woods

Photographs taken in South Cambridgeshire, October 2022.

Poem from the poetry collection Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts (published by Lapwing Publications 2011)

Writing Woods

She is lucid

Like a clear glass bowl of fresh water

In sunlight

When she speaks rivers

 

Chlorophyll flows brightly in her veins

And through her fingertips

Like lit green fuses

As she exhales grass

 

Words drop from her pen

Like the rain’s tears

And a soft wind calms anxious hedgerows

With promises of spring

When she writes woods

 

But now I am just writing

Her writing woods

And you are reading

Me writing her writing

As the trees grow further and further back

And the sky mirror becomes clouded

Because we bind ourselves in words

That stop the leaves from falling

Or growing either

                                                           

                                                                J.S. Watts

Images of Underword

So, it's not quite been officially announced, though it may have been by the time you are reading this, but I have a new poetry collection out from Lapwing Publications at the end of this year. It's called Underword and, as has become the way with my poetry books, my photographic art work will be gracing its front cover. 

As you will know if you've read my previous post about choosing images for a book cover, The Submerged Sea - Cover Art , I end up rejecting a number of perfectly good images in order to choose one that works with the theme of the collection and the size, shape and design of the cover. I always feel sad for the images I reject along the way, as well as excited by the one that makes the final cut.

I'm therefore going to use this blog to tell you about the theme of the collection that I am trying to evoke, share the runners up for Underword's cover image and unveil the successful image.

To begin with an explanation - this is the blurb for Underword: 

In an age where we can talk about anything, we remain reticent about death. It is an integral, complex, unavoidable part of life, the one guaranteed thing all of us will experience, but it remains our final taboo. 

Underword is a poetry collection that is not afraid to examine death from many angles and viewpoints. Loosely following the narrative flow of the story of Orpheus, the poems of Underword explore life, dying, death, mourning, moving on, hell and the afterlife, hope, disintegration and despair, and endings. Death is as limitless and as limiting as life. Its stories are many.

Consider this a sneak preview, because in many ways it is. Here is the image that will be on the cover of Underword when it emerges out of the dark and into the light at the tail end of 2022.

And finally...

Underword, a poetry collection by J.S.Watts will be published by Lapwing Publications in winter 2022