Self-Portrait at Pentecost -Margot Krebs Neale
I have been grateful to the Cambridge photographer Margot Krebs Neale for some of the beautiful images which have accompanied my poems on this blog, and I know that many of my readers have found they form not so much an illustration as a commentry, or in some ways a kind of poem in themselves. Some of you have wanted to know a little more about this collaboration and about Margot, so I have asked her to introduce herself in this last interlude’ post before we enter into the more intense sequence of Holy Week Sonnets. Here is what she writes:
“Malcolm kindly suggested introducing Margot. Well, when I was a baby my parents were sent to Poland and there asked a Polish woman, Cenia M. to look after their children during the day. She told stories and I loved them also accompanying stories were dressing up and images. So words translated into the physical world, with their litteral sense and as symbols. Yellow was the sun as much as the sun was yellow. When I went to French schools, stories were somehow replaced for me by poetry. I had a good memory for them but when one teacher punished the excessively talkative pupils by making them learn one stanza during break time and if punished again the next day, two and so on, my memory and taste for poetry grew and grew.
Always I loved expressing with images something of what I had heard. Prayers and songs had a good place in my poetry books, so naturally when I first read Malcolm’s sonnets I did the same, used some of the very large number of photos I have taken since I was eight to reflect what I hear.
“One of the very large number of photos I have taken”
Malcolm shared some of them and gradually \I moved from responding when it sprung form reading/hearing to looking to respond to all poems with more concentration and effort, exchanging views with Malcolm.
My picture for Palm Sunday will I hope illustrate what I like particularly, a picture which can be read in various ways. Who stands in the eye of the camera? The photographer, the writer, the reader, or God himself? The camera is a wonderful instrument for speaking with several voices and remain invisible or choosing not to. I hope my pictures speak my language to tell what I saw but also that they may speak your language to tell you a story you need to hear, Malcolm’s poems do that for me.”
“…and one I took yesterday”
You can see and ‘like’ a facebook page for Margot’s photographs here: Margot’s Page
My next post, for Palm Sunday begins a series I will post each day for Holy Week.
Malcolm Guite 