Many of my more recent writings have been produced during the writing course I attended at the National Media Museum in Bradford at the beginning of 2009. The course has finished now although another is due to begin in June. Meanwhile, a number of us have decided to continue meeting and trying to write.
A week or so ago we visited Cartwright Hall in Bradford, to view a retrospective exhibition by German artist Jockel Reisner. While we all enjoyed this show, there was nothing I saw there that particularly inspired anything to write.
However, at the other end of the corridor was a photographic exhibition: Z Polski Do Anglii: Polish Communities in Britain. There I found an image by Bradford photographer Tim Smith particularly powerful. I knew I wanted to write something in response but it was incredibly difficult to come up with words that conveyed anything like the force of the original image.
After several drafts and much crossing-out, my poem Lifetagging emerged.

Tags: writing, poem