Poetry series:'between the lines'
Unnamed pOem
By Laura Dent
I long for your affection,
your touch to ameliorate the fog in my mind,
the anxieties and the remains of arguments
that run riot through my veins and leave a stain on our name.
But I only feel the isolation of feeling
like a useless weight on your shoulders.
You tried to shake me off,
but I clung
like poison ivy to your lungs
while you laugh with your friends
and make relationships that haven’t been touched, tainted,
used and abused,
wrung of their last lease of life too many times.
Why can’t I just shut up, swallow it or learn to let it go.
My own work is self-labelled as documentary photography, out of a lack of a better title. By carrying a camera daily, I aim to embody the spirit of the Brownie in making the means to photography ready to me at every moment, without obstruction – by doing so, I can take a photograph of anything that captures my eye and interests me enough to preserve. Any of us can do this these days, with a camera readily available in our pockets around the clock – and many of us do so without even thinking about it. Next time you take your phone out to take a photograph, whether it is of your friends or of something that caught your eye, think about how you are participating in the act of documenting your life through photography. Make prints of your favourites, display them on your walls, share them with your friends and family. Follow the tradition of those who came before you and took their own snapshots documenting their lives. Everyone is a documentary photographer today, and this is a good thing.