I’m happy to announce that my collaborator Nina West and I are almost finished work on a brand-new chapbook that is rather different from the usual poetry-only or short stories found in chapbooks. At this point, we have completed the contents and are considering a cover design. It should be published and available to readers within a month or so.
Double Vision contains Nina’s drawings, my photography, and our creative written responses to each other’s art. Unlike most ekphrastic efforts (a field I explored in a previous Substack), it is two-way: a pair of artist-writers responding to each other’s visual work.
I wrote in my part of the Preface:
”Nina and I were members of the Unitarian Universalist group Liberal Religious Youth (LRY) and we became friends via an LRY alumni group on Facebook, where I admired her highly detailed drawings and eloquent personal essays. We finally met face-to-face when I visited Atlanta. Nina told me that her work, despite its quality, had not been much published. I suggested that she write responses to my photography (black and white, to save on printing costs). I’d do the same with her drawings. Nina immediately agreed.
Our process was simple: we shared images with each other, saying little about what they represented or what our intentions were in making them. Either prose or poetry responses were acceptable.It’s fascinating to read what she sees in my photos, often layers of meaning I had barely thought about.”
Here are a couple of samples from the book: first, my photo of a water glass and Nina’s response.
Waterglass
by Nina West
Waterglass is a very arresting image. 'Arresting' is the word that first came to mind. Almost immediately I wondered why the word 'arresting' came to mind. Of course, I know there is a meaning for the word 'arrest', of something that has so much impact that it commands attention, stops you in your tracks. Given the state of things here in the US right now, with arrests being made with unfortunate and violent frequency, I wondered if I'd been half-primed for that particular word to surface. In any case, I understood right away why you were distracted from a task by the Reality of that image when you photographed it.
Reality. That word seems better. Waterglass has Reality, as if everything has been distilled into the elements of light and shadow, circle and line, intensity, rhythm, brilliance, liquidness, transparency.
Though I know what a glass is and what light is, this photo reveals something more. I can see the most intense brilliant light emanates from a position that's roughly 6 o'clock at the base of the glass. It's as if vivid light has brought the glass into existence.
Also at a first glance, I thought I was catching the glimpse of a seated God attached to that shaft of light. And then upon a closer look I can see you (or a person) are the seated god and the beam of light is either being focused from your mind to the glass or the other way around. You as seated god are caught in the rhythms, the interplay of shadow and light formed by the bigger shaft of light that stretches across the table. These are some of the things I 'know' from looking, or that I can see. A somewhat literal description.
And then... instead of those recognizable parts, I surrender to the image, that a shaft of light streaks diagonally, blasts through a circle made of smaller concentric circles it contains. Bigger rings appear, as if the most concrete circle has been dropped into light that radiates outward, like the rings on a pond but instead of moving water, there are rings of light. More light pours in, soft, with irregular shapes, repetitions, overlappings, like an intriguing hand of light that reaches or perhaps moves arcs of light.
Perhaps this is what it was like when all was darkness and then suddenly there was light and space into which light could move.
***
And then Nina’s drawing, followed by my interpretation.
Secret Grove
by John Oughton
These trees are no longer content to go about the slow work of photosynthesis, of unrolling and dropping leaves. Some aspire to become emblems, standing art, grave markers, or nesting sites for strange birds never seen here.
Did you know that if you carefully dig up a tree, and stand it upside down in the hole thus created, its roots will be as long and complexly divided as its branches? The under-tree mirrors the over-tree.
The central tree has never stood still. It walked furrows through the earth until it found the right space, where a bearded sun shines through and around it. Cursive writing and sketches of buildings burst out of its aura. The tree booms like a giant bass string when you approach, energy rolling off in waves, a humming that makes leaves dance like castanets. Once every 17 years, cicadas emerge from the earth to sit on its branches and sing interspecies harmony.
A careful eye will note that the shadows cast by the attending trees do not match their progenitors. Also, the bottom of the image could be water, with soft shadows and reflections stroking its surface, as well as land. Or perhaps it is the beginning of the under-earth, where roots writhe, awaiting their share of light.
***
I will announce here in Substack and on social media when Double Vision is available. It would make a great Christmas/Hanukkah gift for yourself or anyone who loves both art and writing, hint, hint.
Beautiful, looking forward to reading it!
Beautiful visual and written work John and Nina! I was raised Unitarian and a member of the LRY too!