![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl_1vqyk2rqOKEhWcoweAbMpvHaNq6-Rg0amY1JWLVBNHS0ml7b_FZaTuUbDp0HAjrIS8yu0J7S7nSBTvu-y0EzgdBVOUZQqr6_5VAR-ZAH9eIlFoPM7qCCxSXzO4kMT_h20bP28luRyf6/s200/Fb1.jpg)
or the past couple of months my friend Caroline has belonged to Street Photography Now, a project for amateur photographers which each week instructs its members to go outside and either photograph a particular scene or use their cameras in a particular way.
I have decided to take part too and write a twenty-one syllable response to the instructions. Each week I want to create a poem that has a strong visual, perhaps Imagist quality, what Barthes calls 'an explosion [which] makes a little star on the pane of the text' (Camera Lucida).
Last week's instructions were to get 'On your knees please... Take a picture from ground level.' This was my (slightly cheating) response:
Last week's instructions were to get 'On your knees please... Take a picture from ground level.' This was my (slightly cheating) response:
This is the path the leaf took:
from bud, down,
stripped to vertebrae
and the push of my brush.
And this week the Street Photography chiefs said, 'Play photographic poker. Look for a pair, two pairs, or three of a kind.' Today I came up with this:
On the snow-slowed road
a car slushes past,
its headlights form yellow cones
flecked with shadows.
I'm enjoying myself hugely and hope post a few more small poetic explosions over the coming weeks.
***Today's initial began as a lightning flash, but a furry frost beast appeared instead, no doubt born of the snow.