Category: Poems from Paintings

During lockdown, I began to explore my husband’s collection of art books which filled our shelves and which I had never previously paid much attention to. I came to realise that there might be a poem in some of the paintings, particularly but not exclusively those which caught so vividly a significant moment in time, … Continue reading “1. How I came to marry poems and paintings”

At the heart of the poetry project was a feeling of wonder – wonder at the skill of the artist, and also wonder at what the artist meant to convey, always aware that my intuition might be very different from others’ responses. This sense of ambivalence is most clearly displayed in Surrealist paintings – What … Continue reading “2. My poems from paintings project”

I have learned a great deal through writing these poems. As a child, art and literature were linked: my mother had a book of Pre-Raphaelite paintings where I found, to my delight, The Lady of Shalott, Mariana at the Moated Grange, Ophelia and others. Since those early days, I have, of course, been to many … Continue reading “3. The driving force of poetry”

One of the intriguing challenges was to find a poetic form that would complement the painting. For example, Turner’s Snowstorm at Sea needed, I thought, a rising and falling structure to match the ship’s lurching, as experienced by the artist who asked, we are told, to be lashed to the mast in order to feel … Continue reading “4. How to match the poetic form to the painting”

Herewith some musings on time and movement in paintings and poems. The ways in which artists suggest movement and the passing of time is paradoxical. The moment depicted is fixed eternally on a two-dimensional canvas, resisting change even while suggesting its inevitability. The viewer is bounded by his own temporal experience while still able to … Continue reading “5. “Time passes, Listen, Time passes…” (Dylan Thomas)”