Inspired #21

Among the trees - responding to the emotion in poetry and the feelings inspired by trees.

Hello and welcome to Inspired, a weekly email for my paid subscribers. In this series I want to explore topics which I hope might spark some inspiration for your own photography. I will talk about my thought process for creating images, both in the field and in post processing. The posts will be linked in some way to the monthly challenges, hopefully giving you all lots of food for thought.

There are many things that can inspire us to make photographs. Often they are spontaneous interactions with place but sometimes they are articles, literature, poetry or other art that sparks ideas and that is exactly what happened to me at the weekend. I was reading Substack over breakfast and came across a post by Amy Hoppock - A smaller and deeper practice

In the post she invites readers to find joy in small delights and to do this by reading the same poem every day for a whole month. The poem she had chosen was When I am Among the Trees

By Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

But walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, "Stay awhile."

the light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,

"and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”

I find Mary Olivers poems really fascinating and I love the sense of nature connectedness that runs through them all. So I decided that as well as living with this poem for a month I would also respond to it in photographs and it is this process that I want to discuss in today’s post.