I was delighted to collaborate with Abegail Morley on her poetry pamphlet, The Memory of Water, now available to buy from Indigo Dreams. I provided the colour cover image and several black and white images that feature inside. They are photos taken at Scotney Castle, a magical place and the inspiration for the beautiful poems in this pamphlet. I manipulated some of the images using Photoshop including using ‘layering’, one of my favourite techniques.
Photograph by Karen Dennison
The memory of water
Nothing escapes water. It clutches its past, stores
everything that’s ever happened in its bulky weight,
reflects all it knows onto the underbellies of clouds,
clings to the old days when ice clenched its teeth.
Sometimes on gentle summer evenings when the moat
doesn’t know you’re there, its lapping ripples clear
their throats, let stories float from their tongues
like paper boats, rose petals in oil, feathers in air.
Water cannot lose its beginnings, memory crouches
in its black pockets. If you put your ear to its mouth
you hear the clang of bells, footsteps hurtling
across a bridge, the splash of a fall after leaping.
Abegail Morley
Karen Dennison 