D'yana reading Offcumdens

Today to my great surprise, a copy of Offcumdens, photographs of Yorkshire by Bob Hamilton (aka Earthdreamer) & poetry by Emma Storr, arrived in the mail. It’s a stunning book. It would have been stunning as a coffee table photography book, but it has poems that begin like the title poem, “Offcumden,” “I didn’t know I’d fall in love with bleak….” or stanzas that surprise, like the first one in “Exposure”:

He prefers fog,
the way it holds the trees
in grey aspic, leaves
their trunks glistening. 

The postage cost more than the book, but Bob, in his infinite generosity, sent the book, paid the postage. We’ve been Blip friends for a decade, and he’s that kind of guy. Photographs on the left-hand pages, poems on the right.

It arrived this morning, and this afternoon, when D’yana brought me her Bio-mat to help me heal my inflamed chest cartilage (it worked for her), she couldn’t resist having a look: and she was moved to tears. The lines that pushed her over the edge were the conclusion to “Your Kissing Gate”: 

Your other half
is missing

your kissing.

D’yana practices Pilates, sings with The Raging Grannies, and is currently part of a campaign to save the salmon. The salmon are dying because of dams, global warming, and loss of habitat. She says if we can get rid of the dams, that’s step one. Then restore habitat. Then maybe the salmon can cope with global warming. “Because they’re part of us,” she says, “and if they go, the Orca go, and if the Orca go, our lives will be bereft, and we’ll be next.”