We are honoured and delighted that two new haiku in Dutch as well as a Dutch interpretation of Little Blue Flower have been included in the anthology Aan het Woord 2020 – de geur van geluid, edited by Ferre Denis, Maria de Bie and Nol Hovens, published by Haiku Kring Nederland and Haiku-centrum Vlaanderen. A big thank you to the editors for including my poems and creating this beautiful anthology.
Wishing you all a wonderful Wednesday and Happy Thanksgiving to our friends across the water,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Camera: Canon Powershot SX60 HS, Settings: f/5.6 – 1/160 s – ISO 800, f/5.6 – 1/125 s – ISO 800 and f/4 – 1/160 s – ISO 200.
Regular readers of this blog will know that the natural beauty of our world is a constant source of inspiration to me and today I am showing you what lies behind the way my photographs and poems are shared together.
It all began during a week’s Summer School at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Queen’s University Belfast, and my visit to the Linen Hall Library in July 2007.
Images and Reflections, both as book and exhibition, was one of the landmarks of the Linen Hall Library’s Open Door Millennium Festival and also marked the opening of the Library’s extended premises. It brought together vivid photographs of the Ulster of the last century with powerful contemporary writing by many of the province’s leading literary figures.
Seamus Heaney selected a photograph from the 1930s of a threshing scene that fitted perfectly with his poem Threshing Day. Michael Longley chose a photograph of a towpath of the early 1900s to accompany his poem In Memory of My Parents. Brian Keenan selected an old photograph of children at a cottage in Glenoe and created the poem Album to sit alongside it. Gerald Dawe immediately decided on a photograph of an emigrant family leaving Derry in the 1930s and knew that was the image he wanted to write a poem for.
Gerald was leading our poetry workshop on writing poems for and from photographs as part of the Summer School. He told us that the photograph of the emigrant family leaving Derry was pinned to a board above his writing desk for months and he enjoyed spending time with it, growing familiar with the faces inside the photograph and when the Linen Hall Library asked him if they could have a poem for the exhibition he approached it from within the image and wrote it in the mother’s voice. It is a beautiful poem called Snap, symbolising both the idea of a snapshot and the being snapped away from a life they knew.
The poem has since been included in his Selected Poems (published in 2012).
Prior to my week in Belfast my photography and my writing had been separate interests and I rarely brought the two together. Since then I’ve written poems to accompany photographs from a variety of angles and taken photographs to accompany existing poems. I will always be grateful to Gerry for sharing his insights during his wonderful workshop.
Images and Reflections is a book I treasure to this day and it continues to inspire me. It is available from the Linen Hall Library and from Amazon.
Wishing you a blessed Sunday and a peaceful week ahead,
It was a lovely surprise when this young swan pair made their nest on the river. They and their three remaining cygnets are a true inspiration and continue to lift the spirits of our community in these challenging times.
Wishing you all a peaceful Sunday and a blessed week ahead,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Camera: Canon Powershot SX60 HS, Settings: f/5.6 – 1/400 s – ISO 200, f/5.6 – 1/500 s – ISO 400 and f/5.6 – 1/400 s – ISO 160.
I am very grateful for all the amazing work the health service and everyone else who is making a positive difference is currently doing.
Following the example of Spain, France, The Netherlands and India, the UK is now organising a #clapforourcarers event on Thursday 26th March at 8pm where we can show our appreciation with a massive round of applause. You can clap your hands on your doorstep, balcony or indoors and share it online through social media.
Hoping you all stay safe and well,
with love from Xenia xxx
Photographs by Xenia Tran, edited in lr.
Camera: Panasonic Lumix FZ200, Settings: f/3.5 – 1/100 s – ISO 200, f/4 – 1/50 – ISO 200 and f/3.5 – 1/125 s – ISO 100.
All along our coast we are blessed with friendly neighbours of the feathered kind. They pair for life, raise their chicks as a couple and community. There’s something special about the light in their eyes, traversing crystal sea or sky. The way they sit on chimney pots, watch over us, feels very reassuring.
looking up spring equinox approaches a spinning sun
Tranature 
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