Photographing Rowan Middleton

Recently, I photographed the Poet, Rowan Middleton. Rowan Middleton teaches creative writing and English literature at the University of Gloucestershire. His pamphlets The Stolen Herd and Stars and Shadows are published by Yew Tree Press.

I photographed Rowan at home near Stroud.

Rowan has kindly shared a poem.

After Gardening 

I put away the secateurs and saws 

and lock the shed. The leaves lie brown and wet 

like tea dregs emptied from the pot. The sun 

is low and windows gleam metallic orange. 

A car horn blares from several streets away, 

then someone’s heating kicks itself awake. 

I look across the newly sculpted trees 

and see, between the medlar and the quince 

a swirling column made of tiny flies. 

And then, beyond the hedge, above the roofs 

a magpie settles on the ash tree’s tip, 

its branches rocking into stillness. The sky 

is clear. A flock of doves sweep overhead; 

their wingbeats send a pulse into the air.