PHOTO RENGA. THIS IS A CALL AND RESPONSE POEM. IN EACH ITERATION NAOMI AND I SEND EACH OTHER A NEW HAIKU AND A PHOTOGRAPH. IN TRADITIONAL RENGA THE LINKING TEXT IS TWO SEVEN SYLLABLE LINES - HERE WE USE OUR PHOTOS INSTEAD. AS I INVITED NAOMI TO COLLABORATE WITH ME ON THIS, IT'S ALSO TRADITIONAL FOR ME TO START THE RENGA. THIS RENGA READS BACKWARDS ...SO IF YOU WANT THE FULL NARRATIVE START AT THE FOOT AND READ UP. OTHERWISE SCROLL DOWN...

Painted walls tell us

these sharp colours will beckon

daffodil, crocus.

Numbered paragraphs

illustrate simplicty;

joy of making dough.

Two circles, some squares.

Jasmine floats over roses

in the back garden.

Geometry rules

the stairway. An open door

is bold as sunshine.

A shaft of sunlight

brightens the darkest corner.

What looks soft is hard.

Heat and light reveal

hard edges of weather-worn

aging paving stones.

Clouds breed like rabbits

as the ground drys and hardens

cracks start to appear.

Everything has

its season. Dying roses

mimic cumuli.

Look up to catch luck

as it showers down unseen

but all embracing.

A heavy sky lives

in pond water. Thumb sized frogs

wait for a downpour.

Even a dead tree

has a purpose: as a host

for new leaves, regrowth.

Clouds scud without thought

landing on those that will last

just a short season.

Although delicate

the poppy petals hang on

as wind sweeps through corn.

A piercing of red

shoots through the green, pepper-hot

petals make their mark.

Above the beet field

clouds muscle in on blue sky.

Underfoot: cracked earth.

In a courtyard an

enamel bath sits and waits

for the Summer rain.

Uninterrupted

the scenery says its piece

to the croquet lawn.

The heat’s everywhere -

flames licking the air, the sun

returning their touch.

The gerberas look

up to the sun, are shocked

to find only one.

Over cups of tea

we look at the stars, but can’t

predict the winner.

An open goal leads

to quieter streets and pubs.

On one side blue sky.

An open door leads

on to heat and light, green leaves -

a rose petal falls.

A helicopter

flies overhead as dogs bark

and a Hoover dies.

Red and yellow ducks,

sitting pretty, pose for snaps

and ignore the heat.

A new day bristles

as the green parakeets screech.

With the heat comes dust.

Nightfall – lovers find

their comfort in marble wings,

the sky darkening.

A crush of petals

balanced on a single stem.

Night takes hours to fall.

This bright yellow smile

rules my kitchen. Cut flowers

know their time is short.

Roots swim up for air,

shoot leaves lighter than water.

A flower opens.

Crab claw, nettle sting -

spiked and sea-tossed, gaze skywards

to the scattered stars.

The sun continues

while white clouds float out to sea.

The beach is empty.

While I was drawing this a tanned teenage girl wearing only a Rasta hat and a bikini came toward me on a bicycle, stopped, looked down at my drawing and said, ‘Did you like, go to college to learn how to do that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking up at her.

‘My Mom went to college to learn how to do that, too,’ she said, ‘but she can’t do it as good as you,’

‘That’s nice of you to say,’ I said to the girl, ‘but you probably shouldn’t say that to your mother,’

‘No,’ said the girl after short pause, ‘I guess I probably shouldn’t.’

colours painted into the screen

After all the time spent thinking, sketching, planning and sketching again, the printing process is fast and furious.  I spent a whole day in the print studio: in the morning I exposed the artwork into the screen and mixed my colours, and in the afternoon I made the print.

inks mixed ready to print the exposed screen

the first layer drying on the rack

layer two: a blend of purple and brown to add detail

layer 3 - green/blue highlights

I overprinted the image with words to bring the three parts of the tryptich together, and finally added the feathers  – I used real feathers in the exposure unit with the hand drawn artwork, and then printed the ‘negative’ image by painting the ink straight onto the screen – the same method I used for the first layer.

the final print

While I was drawing this 2 middle aged women with dark orange tans came up the street on bicycles, pulled up on either side of me, looked down and started talking at me.

‘Well, hey there,’ said the woman to my right, ‘I see you’re doing some painting?’
‘Actually,’ I said, putting a pastel back in its box and looking up at her, ‘I’m drawing,’
‘Oh, how neat,’ she shouted out.
Then the other woman started talking.

‘On Oprah yesterday there was an artist who did this like massive portrait,’ she said, letting go of her handlebars and drawing a big air square with her hands, ‘and he’s like the fastest portraitist in the world. And he was like doing this portrait in 2 minutes only using his hands, no brushes, and right alongside of him they had the fastest violinist in the world and he was playing Vivaldi, one of the seasons, I don’t know which season, but it was, really, really fast.’

Then the other woman shouted out how neat again and then, without even waiting for my response to the Oprah portrait story, they both told to me to be sure to have a great day and rode off.

While I was drawing this a series of teenagers went up and down the street on red motor scooters while a short, fat woman with hair like a Lego man shouted instructions at them- ‘A little gas, a little break, a little gas a little break a little gas, a little break,’

Then, as if I’d called out, hey who’s related to that fat motorcycle instructor, a middle aged man came over to me, pointed to the woman and said, ‘That’s my sister. She’s got a whole heap of them motor scooters so she’s teaching my kids to ride ‘em,’

Then, because I didn’t know what else to say I said – ‘I have a proper motorbike at home,’

Then the man, who was wearing shorts but no shirt, put his hands on his hips, turned his attention fully toward me and started to tell me the story of how he’d once had a motorbike.

But luckily, before he was too far in, he was distracted by his sister who had stopped screaming out motorcycle instructions and was now literally bellowing out information about their evening meal.

‘We’re going to take the scooters out onto A1A,’ she was crying out, ‘we’re gonna go order pizzas. We’re gonna head on down there now and get us some supper underway.’

While I was drawing this a fat black and white cat sat in the driveway and stared at me.

Then a man came out and started putting fishing equipment in the back of a truck parked in the driveway.

Then a woman came up on a bicycle and parked it in the driveway.

After a while the fishing equipment man and the bicycle woman came out and sat on the porch drinking what I presumed, being in America and being only 8am, was coffee.