In the two and fro of collaboration, writing words that will appear between paintings, quite literally in a different kind of book, I am finding myself increasingly obsessed with the one liner. What is its appeal? I've been thinking about how little is worth saying and why the images on my walls are so stark - a chalk path, an oxbow bend in a river, a face asleep, one of Turner's single trees. But then there's Carver's Late Fragment folded over a photo of my kids.
I feel that making anything now, I need to take account of background noise and how poetry might cut through it. That expansiveness isn't necessarily the way. That short lyrics, the simplicity of Basho and of Longley are the great marker stones for this decade - leaving so much out but showing the details we might otherwise overlook. It is the power of metaphor but without the great finger pointing, saying look how clever I am......
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