I met Geraldine Dubois in an artist's book exhibition and we immediately clicked. Looking at her forthright, pure and beautifully printed photos that present and emphasise particular elementals of nature moved me. I loved her work straight away and so when she suggested the idea of doing a book project together I didn't hesitate saying yes...Geraldine shared her most recent black and white work on wild cow parsley, and spoke of her feelings for this common , often ignored wasteland inhabitant and from her words and images I wrote a tight and concise set of poems. The poems are minimalist. They try to explore the images thrown up by the photos. They demanded haiku; small compacted possibilities that might take root (or not) like seeds..
Once the series was completed writer and translator Louise Dubois wrote a mirroring set of variations in French, picked up the English versions and riffed off them to build a stunning defamiliarised set of poems in French. All three of us were in agreement that the French text would not be a translation but rather a free standing (and self-contained ) work in its own right: the whole subject of whether poetry can really be translated is an interesting and quasi unanswersble question. Opting for a version rather than a translation bestows so much more creative freedom on the second writer; Louise's brief was to use the poems as starting point, trigger, inspiration in any way she liked for her own work in the nature of free-versioning. The dual-language handmade limited edition artist's book the three of us have made is available to buy on Geraldine's site at http/www.gouzouland.com/cow-parsley.html
the object Geraldine has made is a thing of beauty...
