Priora

Poetry and photography share much common ground. A great deal of the best poetry being written today is filmic and a single line. If written well, it should be able to draw the reader to it in a way that is not too dissimilar to that of a good photograph. However, poetry and photography do not always combine well artistically; various collections have shown this over recent years. The initiative has to be a novel one.

Priora provides a new focus on the importance of objects to specific poems or to a poet’s own writing practice. Fifty leading UK poets are asked to choose an object that follows these guiding principles. All photos are shot with a narrow depth of field which shows the object in focus and the poet out of focus, thus removing the notion of celebrity. The project relies on a coherence between the poet, object and photograph.

I wish to express my thanks to the UK poets who have already contributed towards the project. I am currently expanding the project to cover both American and Irish poets.