The Song of the Hare

She sang the song of the hare

and the trees responded

 

She sang the song of the hare

and the wind trembled

She sang the song of the hare

and the stars oscillated

She sang the song of the hare

and the earth drummed

She sang the song of the hare

and the hanged man hung

as the god in the tree

put forth branches of sorrow

and the lark climbed high

in an ecstasy of cloud 


The Song of the Hare by Jane Holland was published in Boudicca & Co (Salt Publishing) 2006. 
A poem to celebrate the coming-in of summer!

Photos: Jane Holland, May 2014. Cornwall, near Bodmin Moor.
(Couldn't spot a hare, sorry.)

Warwick Words: Poetry & Photography Exhibition

Warwick Words Festival Poetry & Photography Exhbition
Art & Wine Gallery, Jury Street
Warwick





Free Entry
Opening times:
Thurs 2nd October 10am – 6pm
Fri 3rd & Sat 4th October 10am – 10pm
Sun 5th October 11am – 5pm

This summer, I've joined forces with Anand Chhabra, Artist-in-Residence at Spencer Yard, Leamington Spa, in a collaborative project of poetry and photography.

Anand has captured people and places around Warwickshire, not with hi-tech photographic equipment but with a £20 Holga camera, demonstrating how to take "artistic, street-style pictures inexpensively".

I'm in the process of writing a series of poems to accompany the photographs. The whole project is due to be exhibited at a Warwick art gallery over the Warwick Words Festival long weekend in October.

Poetry/Photography Collaboration

I've just heard that a much-discussed project will be going ahead this summer, namely a poetry/photography collaboration between myself and the Leamington Spa Artist in Residence, Anand Chhabra.

The details haven't yet been thrashed out between us, but I believe Anand will be taking photographs around the town of Warwick and I will then write poems to accompany them - probably somewhere between 15 and 20 poems in total. The resulting collaboration will then be exhibited at a Warwick art gallery during the weekend of the Warwick Words Festival in early October, in connection with my year-long Warwick Poet Laureateship which ends that month.

It's a challenging but exciting thought, having to combine my words with someone else's images. I've written about photographs before, of course, but never quite in the same collaborative spirit, and I have no idea right now how it will work out. But I'm sure that when Anand and I put our heads together in the next few weeks, some mutually interesting themes based around the town of Warwick will come up to inform the general thrust of the project and make it something really special.