While I Was Drawing Letters
These are my top 10 favourite While I Was Drawing letters and poems.
If you’re not sure where to begin, this is a good place to start.
Each is a small act of noticing, of bearing witness to the beauty, complexity and ever changing wild tangle of being alive.
AI cannot do this
It cannot press pencil to paper with the weight of a heartbeat or capture the spark of a soul with hands of sinew, blood, and bone. It cannot lay flakes of graphite across canvas with fingertips alive with thousands of nerve endings, nor transform a blank page into black feathers with the pressure of a human touch.
Birds of Prayer
They rise, scattered and solitary, lifting from fields and rooftops, drops of ink against the fading light. At first, a trickle. In twos and threes, they coalesce, wingtips catching the last gold of the day as they are drawn inexorably toward their distant roost and rest.
Interview with a slug
Something glistens. A slow, silvered shimmer across the kitchen worktop. I stop, move closer.
Stolen Fire
She has not light to call her own No cascade of fusion spilling brilliance Instead, stealing molten gold from the sun Cooling it's blazing fire in her tranquil seas Then returning it to us, silver-bright and cold I capture her stolen light Imprisoned in binary code and pixels But they cannot hold her truly My eye, naked, beholds…
Notice
There is a tree in a hedgerow along the M40 that has long since surrendered to death. Skeletal limbs stretch skyward, its bark pale and smooth like bone. It stands just before the north bound junction of the M42, marking the gateway of my journey between the adult I have become and the child I once was.
In this moment
The time will come to sit down at my desk, for checking emails and sending reports, dealing with urgencies, for planning and deadlines and meetings.
While I Was Drawing
I got lost. Between one pencil stroke and the next.
I sit at my desk in my studio. I look down, pick up my pencil and draw a single stroke. The edges of reality soften and blur. I can feel adventures and memories brush the back of my mind. Ideas and inspiration and endless worlds to explore and discover where the tip of my pencil touches the canvas.