Combining two art forms to make something beautiful

Okay I don't think of myself as all that good at either poetry or photography, but when I combine the two I have some lovely pieces.

I only just discovered these way of displaying my words and images together this summer. Firstly I have of course been taking photos of flowers and nature since I was a child. I know I have a good eye,but I was never sure what I could do to display them.

Well I decided that I would play around with some of the shorter poetry forms and while these are the the worlds deepest poems, they are pleasant and soothing in many cases. Crossing them with some of my better images was just a logical step.

I started with the acrostic and cinquian poems I wrote. You can look up what those styles are and you will see that they make a perfect set of words for a photo poem.  Here are the three cinquain that I wrote and then played with:

As you can see, a simple form that easily rests on top of the images I have. The form is one, two, three, four, one...simple form but surprisingly difficult to write something touching.

Next we have the four Acrostic poems I wrote:

Again a fun project. Acrostic poems spell out a word on the vertical. And can be as little as two lines all the way up to whatever, I guess. I found went i was cropping and resizing the images that I had that lovely close up of a bee.

Finally I have just today been playing with some of my haiku. I have a lot more of those poems, so I will be putting them up in the following weeks but here is a brief example:

All of the photos you see were taken with a simple and cheap digital camera. No fancy phone camera, no high end expensive equipment. Just my eye and the built in zoom on the camera. I don't spend a lot of time in framing my images, I just see something I want to photograph and I frame it up. Simple images, a good eye and a little patience...oh yes..and an open and willing heart.

Another thing I have started on is doing poems for old photographs. You know those wonderful black and white (or sepia) photos that we all have stashed away someplace. I decided to us for my first stab at this a beautiful photo of my mother when she was sixteen. That would make the photo from 1956. My mom was still a sweet and innocent girl here. Life had yet to defeat dreams (I think)

I know this is harder to read but it is delicate, like my mom. I only have this one done so far but I hope to do many more, if I can get the old photos from my mother.

And finally I have one free verse poem I did:

Not as good as the others but I will work these out. My nature free verses I think will work that best with my photos. Only time will tell.

Playing with photographs and poetry

As both a photographer and a writer I do a lot of different things. Yes, most of my photography is of the same basic subject, flowers. Be they cultivated or wild weeds, I take photos of them and then post them for people to enjoy over on my photo blog, Window to my mind.

But as a writer most of what I do is a bit different.  Writing short stories, novellas and novels doesn't always blend well with the photos I take, but now my poetry, that is a different story. Over the past few months I have been playing with some of the shorter forms of poetry. Just to see if I can pull them off.  Not sure how good they are but they do work well placed into some of the photographs I have taken.

In today's blog here I thought I would post up the cinquain poems i have written placed over some of my photos...for your viewing pleasure of course.  Hope you like.  Over the next year I plan on doing more before I collect them all into one volume and put them out.

These are what is known as a didactic cinquain. Basically you do it as follows, line a one word, line b two words, line c three, line d four and line five one. Simple but not as easy as it looks. Using photoshop I simply edited the photo that I wished to use to the correct size and then typed in the poem.

Hands

This poem was submitted to a father/son/mother/daughter writing contest.  While it didn't win, show or place it did have a nice review or two so I thought why not put it up here?

Hands

Small and soft

Pudgy little fingers

Wrapped around a finger

Wrapped around a heart

Grimy little fingers

Longer now

Holding out a flower

A gift and a smile

Grown longer still

Nails tipped in colors

Sparkles and jewels

Soon to be a lady

Fingers strong

Flying over keys

Working hard

Every day

Growing thinner now

Skin not so plump

Scars from living

Easy to see

Age slowly showing

Veins clear now

Knuckles losing flexibility

But still strong

Time passes

Suddenly you see

Your mother's hands

Attached to you

Hands that look old

But filled with character

Reaching back to hold

The fingers of a grandchild

Morning sunshine all around

Well been a busy morning.  Lots of nice people giving us condolences on our loss.  As nice as it is I would rather we still had Stephen in our lives but these things happen.

The day is cooler thankfully.  Which made running to the store (okay walking we all know lisa cant run) to get the cocoa.  Gotta make the brownies soon.

Now writing wise it was cool to see this this morning:

http://bestindiebooks.com/great-indie-books/show-books/132/Gates/Short-Stories/

This is a site that advertizes indie author's books.  Now since I got in on the beta test my book is advertised for free.  Not huge when it is just links through to my amazon book but hey it is a start right?  Now if we can get those who link through to actually buy the book I would be happy. 

And it is a great deal after all.  The kindle copy, which is where the link goes, is a great deal.  99 cents for six awesome short stories.  How can you beat that right?

Well back to making another poem video.  Since getting Harry to tell me his story isn't working so well today I figured I have other avenues of expression.  Yeah I could move to Destiny's story or more of Loralil's tales but I want to put my poems out for reading too.

Finding yourself on the web

Okay this is so weird and cool at the same time.  I am now all over the web, again.  In the old days it was the silly websites I put together for fanfiction and poetry and my drawings.  Now it is my actual published work.  I enjoyed it in the old days but now...now it fills in a part of yourself that you didn't know you had.

I am showing up on places like ITunes, Versent Books, Inktera and of course my publishers site.  Now the more places I show up the more chance that someone will actually decide to buy my work.  While the paperback over on Amazon is pretty pricy, the Ebook copy on Itunes is very affordable at 99 cents.  So I am hoping...really really hoping that soon I will see some movement.

I have even posted Gates up on Craig s list and Kijiji.  Now it felt weird putting my book up on those sites but it needs to be done right?  I am right now just sitting here trying to decide if I should put Knight Protector up on those two sites.  It is a novella and a fun one in my opinion.  Course I wrote it so my opinion isn't necessarily unbiased right?

Okay back to writing and reading and trying to think of other ways to get the nice people out there to actually pick up my words and reading them.