by Ruth Bidgood from Time Being (Seren)Suddenly far over the fields
appeared a whole sculpted hill,
white in winter sun.
The camera looked.
It did not see the quarry’s ambivalence—its threat
to nourishing fields, to a valley’s witchery;
or its promise of work, of thudding dusty life.
The camera looked.
Mindlessly its little screen revealed
a different reality, stranger beauty—
a vision of shining cliffs, allowed
by a kingdom in the lens,
a blessing in the light.
I took this photo of the countryside in mid-Wales from the window of a chugging train a few years ago, and a few days after I'd spent an hour on the phone with today's poet of choice.
By all accounts, Ruth is a gifted amateur photographer and eventually the conversation came around to the connection between taking photos and making poems. She remarked that sometimes she's in a place and she senses the landscape has a message for her, but at the time she doesn't comprehend what it is. She takes pictures of places that speak to her, in hopes of capturing what she felt in a particular setting, even if she hasn't fully understood it. If she is having difficulty with a poem, she then pulls out the photo and goes back to that place in her memory.
She likened the process to making a quilt. The photos and memories are the scraps of fabric fashioned into a poem that are used to re-create a story that is part of a larger story.
I like this poem because it not only illustrates this process of Ruth's, but it speaks to me about the tension inherent in photography. I once led a retreat where I asked people to pick an image from a selection of pictures torn from magazines. They were supposed to find one that the felt best represented their spiritual journey at that point in time. One woman selected a picture of railroad tracks leading off into a grassy field. A lit candle illuminated the beginning of the tracks. She talked about the hope and excitement the image represented for her. I knew, from having been to the place the photograph was taken, that it was an image of the railroad tracks leading into the concentration camp at Birkenau.
There are things unsaid in photos, stories that only people who have an attachment to a place can see. There are also possibilities that are visible to those who don't necessarily have strong associations with a place. And then there's simply the reality of the place itself.
There's a message I'm sensing in this, but can't quite fully comprehend at this point in time. Maybe I need to capture a screen shot of this post and save it for a future date when I am writing a poem about this moment . . .
What reality is being revealed to you today?
I took this photo of the countryside in mid-Wales from the window of a chugging train a few years ago, and a few days after I'd spent an hour on the phone with today's poet of choice.
By all accounts, Ruth is a gifted amateur photographer and eventually the conversation came around to the connection between taking photos and making poems. She remarked that sometimes she's in a place and she senses the landscape has a message for her, but at the time she doesn't comprehend what it is. She takes pictures of places that speak to her, in hopes of capturing what she felt in a particular setting, even if she hasn't fully understood it. If she is having difficulty with a poem, she then pulls out the photo and goes back to that place in her memory.
She likened the process to making a quilt. The photos and memories are the scraps of fabric fashioned into a poem that are used to re-create a story that is part of a larger story.
I like this poem because it not only illustrates this process of Ruth's, but it speaks to me about the tension inherent in photography. I once led a retreat where I asked people to pick an image from a selection of pictures torn from magazines. They were supposed to find one that the felt best represented their spiritual journey at that point in time. One woman selected a picture of railroad tracks leading off into a grassy field. A lit candle illuminated the beginning of the tracks. She talked about the hope and excitement the image represented for her. I knew, from having been to the place the photograph was taken, that it was an image of the railroad tracks leading into the concentration camp at Birkenau.
There are things unsaid in photos, stories that only people who have an attachment to a place can see. There are also possibilities that are visible to those who don't necessarily have strong associations with a place. And then there's simply the reality of the place itself.
There's a message I'm sensing in this, but can't quite fully comprehend at this point in time. Maybe I need to capture a screen shot of this post and save it for a future date when I am writing a poem about this moment . . .
What reality is being revealed to you today?
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