Video Poetry
The air is raining birds, falling
against a blue mediterranean backdrop.
We watch the skies and mediaeval rooftops
fill with aerial action as swifts slice open
airspace in search of fledgling fuel.
Sometimes we believe we are flying
with them in a game of human acrobatics
screaming with joy as we dip and dive
to street level, turn on a wing beat
to rise up again, hearts in our mouths.
Undoing all that creativity and energy that goes into setting up a business - nothing can really prepare you for the unravelling.
One of the wonderful things about my sisters dementia is her new way of looking at the world. What would I say if I were a bird calling and what bird would I be? A real chance to think about character and sound with a fabulous Australian bird soundtrack.
Watching the slow disintegration of a loved one's mind feels like the collapse of a universe or the cosmos
Another visit to the Lund Studio in summer where I try to absorb the mantra of the tutor. I'm not quite convinced that my final last art piece truly reflects the genus loci of Sutton Bank and the Vale of York. It seems to have turned into a seascape - perhaps that is where my heart wants to be and is my real passion.
I can’t resist these glorious aerial acrobats - another homage to their exuberance and energy. How can you not feel happy when you watch them?
A journey south combining a full range of childhood memories with a true celebration of a life, now lost, but just as much a part of all those stored precious nuggets of memory.
The disconnect between reality and memory is gaining traction as my sisters dementia progresses. This slow decline is almost like a great glacier in recession and a loss of great significance in my life.
The Azores seas and wind are a constant presence along with the accompanying howling and roaring - completely mesmerising and often quite scary. A human becomes such a small part in this massive repetitive cycle. The earth's moon hauling the seas backwards and forwards day in and day out as we slowly spin around our sun.
A found poem based on an exhibition by Isabel Madureira Andrade in the Arquipélago Contemporary Arts Centre, San Miquel, the Azores - designed by João Mendes Ribeiro, Architects.
It reflects the other worldly atmosphere of this misty, mysterious island surrounded by a heaving Atlantic and still bubbling and seething with volcanic activity.
Accepted for the White Cube exhibition at StAnza, Scotland's International poetry festival, March 2025 and part of the Off Page visual poetics annual celebration. This is a poem about deep time geology and crossing the divide between Hampshire and Dorset and below surface memories it reveals. The soundtrack is composed especially for this poem with Catherine Eunson on Cello and Alison Cohen on percussion.
It is on the increase in the UK and the protected Atlantic oak woodlands of the west coast of Argyll, Scotland is an ideal location for lichen, liverworts and now Lyme disease. A warming climate is to blame as the culprits are ticks that now are not easily killed off in warmer winter weather.
Geology is a useful metaphor for dementia – the bed rock is the oldest and longest lasting memories, gradually reducing through substrate to the surface – the newest memories are the first to disappear.
The beauty of the endless motion of the sea and it sounds and one of the many moments of shared humour that makes my sisters Alzheimer's bearable. I choose to take the happy laughter we had together at this stage.
Understanding the cause of Alzheimer's and the impact of dementia helps me deal with the devastating loss of my sisters memory. I treasure every moment I manage to have with her considering she is in Australia. The video of the seemingly silent storm was taken when we watched it together from Cowes in Australia on my last visit and was such a strong visual metaphor for this terrible disease.
La Gomera is one of the volcanic Canary Isles off the dry west coast of Africa. They were called Fortunatae Insulae (Fortunate Islands, or Isles of the Blest) in ancient Roman accounts. The high summit ridge has a number of rocky fingers which are remnant cores or plugs of volcanic activity on the island. The rest of the island has been eroded into steep ravines down to the sea and a dry desert like landscape. The mountainous ridge catches the rolling Trade Winds and traps moisture that often shrouds the peaks which are home to the Canarian Laurisilva woodlands. This is Garajonay National Park a world heritage site since 1986 because of its rare sub tropical woodlands
Loss of vision can enhance our sense of hearing and amplify sound. In a wild woodland setting at night in the White Mountains, New Hampshire, entombed in a tent, this heightened awareness of my own vulnerability and fear reached pitch fever.
The blanket peat bogs of the Flow Country whose name derives from ‘flowes’, the Scots word for wet peat bog, is itself derived from ‘floi’, Old Norse for wet or marshy. Stretching across Caithness and Sutherland in the far north of Scotland this vast expanse of blanket bog comprises a complex set of interlinked pool systems and micro features that hosts an important biodverse flora and fauna but also plays a vital role in our defence against the effects of climate change
Watching gangs of Swifts feeding at sunset is like watching air combat manoeuvres (ACM)- the tactical art of moving, turning, and situating one's fighter aircraft in order to attain a position from which an attack can be made on another aircraft - namely insects. They are incredible flyers that rarely touch the ground - sleeping, eating, bathing and even mating on the wing, They are also the fastest birds in level flight, with an impressive top speed of 69mph. Swifts are on the red list of the UK Conservation Status Report due to loss of nesting sites in old buildings. The Circular Economy would enable more of these old buildings to be retained and repurposed while keeping nesting sites for these most acrobatic birds.