Dear Shadows

(Fal Publications, 2004)
This collection, beautifully put together by Fal, contains poems-to-snapshots. My father was a keen photographer, from his days in California in the 1920's. Photos are so evocative, so I decided to write poems to them. I liked the result.

I had huge trouble finding a title. Unusually, because I'm good with titles, I think. But then it came to me, a line from Yeats: 'Dear
shadows, now you know it all...' I love the cover photo, a 19th c. Russian painting of the artist's sister, called 'Reading'. It adds poignancy that she died young, in her thirties.