Like radio, we may think that poetry has the best images, given that inside your head you can imagine as
vividly and as strangely as you like. Even in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, perhaps
the heyday of the expensively illustrated gift book, it was a special project to illustrate adult poetry (children’s
anthologies, of course, being a different case).
The right of a voice, however, published by Tregolwyn, an imprint based in the Vale of Glamorgan, is
that rare thing, a cross-media collaboration between two friends - one a Swedish poet, the other an Anglo-Welsh freelance
photographer.
The poet, Lolita Ray, has gathered thirty-two fiercely felt but limpidly expressed short poems distilled
over twenty-five years of family life, friendship and love. Rhys Jones, the photographer, responds with great finesse to her
thoughts, producing in his black and white photographs, analogues of the often dream-like images they have stimulated in him,
the reader. They are, of course, untitled; that is for the poet to state alone. There to complement, not dominate, an integral
part of the book's concept, the photographs are things of quiet, often rather austere, beauty in their own right.
It is the reader who must synthesize a whole, as the third member of the 'exhibition'. It would be well worth
their time to do so, remembering to take things slowly…Ray's poems are deceptively simple, but, at their best, carry
some heavy meanings. Some are graceful and sad; some are pebble-like and gnomic.
Read, for instance - " Welcome"-
Welcome
You pain from the abyssal depths
Is what I would like to say
….
Let's dance you and me
And whirl round the dance floor
So close
That we become one
The photo that 'illustrates' it is not the one you might well expect, but welds with the poem so that they
seem to complete each other.
Well bound and printed on glossy photographic quality paper throughout, this book is attractive either as
a gift or as a rather refined little treat for oneself. It is currently to be found at major bookstores in the UK, on Amazon
and on www.gwales.com.
