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Kate Bown's avatar

A beautiful poem David, I especially enjoyed the stilled ending, one parked car with silent thinker.

It made me stop and pause and take in all the imagery.

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David Kirkby's avatar

Hi Kate. Thankyou! It seems a long way from nature poetry and wilderness, but being out there in the night was all about the rain, and the night, and how a constructed environment becomes something other than what was intended. Even the painted birds seemed in that moment a comment on our relationship to the wider natural world.

This is why I feel that almost all of my work is informed by the natural world. We are, after all, a part of it ourselves.

I like to experiment in my writing with form, and make myself do new things. This work was very much constructed around the photos - taken the night before without any prior planning, just because the scene seemed so eerie to me. So this is very much a "Substack work" - intended as text and image informing one another.

My Substack collection is a mixture of early work and very recent, so it also reflects changes in my style and subject matter over time, some of which relates to changes in where I am, and what I am doing. Yesterday's Post was indeed written late yesterday, so that's as recent as I can get :)

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Conny Borgelioen's avatar

I like the painted electric street boxes. We have an ongoing art project here in Belgium where artists, both professional and amateur, can apply to paint a box. It's running in several towns and cities. There are many here in the small seaside town where I live.

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David Kirkby's avatar

Ah! Lovely...

My passion is wilderness - and some of that is then reflected in my poetry - but I also greatly enjoy street art and abandoned places. "Urbex" as they call it these days - although my Father, born in 1928, loved exploring old buildings and industrial sites and passed that love on to me as I grew up in the 60's and 70's. So.... some of my urban photography appears on my Substack, and more will follow. If Meg and I get back to Europe, we must explore Belgium! :)

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Conny Borgelioen's avatar

You would love the ghost town Doel! Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

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David Kirkby's avatar

Oh! Yes! In fact I have. Meg and I saw something on the television about Doel. It was about the story of the planned redevelopment, and the local people who resisted. The place does look fascinating.....

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