My poems very much reflect a romantic connection with the countryside, with the people I have known, and places I have been to. I use poetry to express a sense of loss and melancholy. Not in a sad way, but rather, a reflective reminisce as time passes. The arrangement of poems (In the Book; Albatross and Moonbeams) gives insight into how nature, people and places, inform my worldview.

I have spent hours dreaming, talking to myself, playing the role of advocate, then defendant. I believe that the conversations we have with
ourselves are compelling, but we rarely communicate those thoughts to the people who need to hear them. Much of my poetry is an insight, a tunnel leading through to this internal dialogue. It is my record, left behind, for the people who should know me better but perhaps, through my reluctance to open that channel of communication (or just busy lives getting in the way) they do not ‘hear’ or ‘see’. And perhaps I do not speak.

A human characteristic, I suspect.

The net result is that something is lost along the way. Our understanding of those closest to us; is incomplete. And as time marches on, opportunities left to complete that process of communication diminish. Rapidly. Exponentially, it seems.

Best crack-on then!

Social fairness and an appreciation for the fine-grain details of our daily lives reoccur in my writing. A reflection of where I came from and the values handed to me by so many people. I was so lucky to have met them and to have shared some time with them (and I still do in some cases). Treasures. One and all.

I am a keen photographer. I try to capture (and sometimes specifically commission) images to accompany my prose. However, I tend to find that the things that I feel are worthy of ‘capture’ are a natural fit to an idea that has been floating around, often, for many years ‘Walking in the Shadow fields’ would be an example of one such poem (and picture).

I write a piece, and I always seem to have stored away in my image bank a scene that ‘fits’.

On this occasion, I had taken an image of myself, on a beautiful late summer evening in a cornfield in Hampshire, setting sun. A tall featureless ‘Shadow-man’, on the corn, slowly disappearing. But still clearly a man.

Later that night, I was troubled. And as is the way of these things; the words came to me.

Perhaps that is the true definition of the word, Synergy.

Right time; Right place.

Art Johnstone