A near proximity to the far off poem

I suspect that “Screens” is one of those atmospheric poems that evokes interesting images, but by the end of it the reader isn’t quite sure what it was all about. Here’s how I see it: The poem sets forward how our days are filled with noise and rushing. Simultaneously we seek escape in parallel realms and our imagination. We

Exalted thus, we left

An old favourite revisited, because artists are allowed to have their obsessions. “Exalted thus, we left” is a reworking of a poem from 2011: I love the Dorothea Tanning painting that spurred the original “Jacob’s Dream for crinolined girls”. When I’m in Tate Modern, I’ll usually try to pop into the Surrealism gallery to gaze

A Bequest of Wonder

Within the confines of a silken sheet, the observers attend upon the temple. Before it returns to ash and dust, they light a votive offering. It is   in a portrait the thumbnail of the painter’s right hand   the sparse arm-hairs of a samurai beset by ghosts   the frog at the woman’s feet,