The Photo Challenge

Robin Halls’ photo from the Precinct zine issue

To borrow some words from Lennon, McCartney and David Byrne, the road from writing to publication can be long and winding, or the road to nowhere. Once a poem or story has been submitted to a publisher, there is the wait … sometimes months, and sometimes you hear nothing at all, leaving you wondering whether it’s OK to follow up with an email, or if you are now free to submit elsewhere. The admin that follows the creativity can be tiring and disheartening – researching suitable publications, keeping track of submissions, dealing with rejections.

I have been spared this for the past ten months, as I have been collaborating with a photographer, Robin Halls, who has been producing a photo zine for every month this year. Each month he sends me photos on a different theme, and I have just two weeks to respond to one or more photos in words. Every month, when I first scroll through, I think ‘I have nothing.’ Yet every month I come up with something. An idea breaks through days later. I often don’t write at that point; I hold it in my head, take it for a walk, then get a draft down and rework it several times over the following week. My default writing process is to take a lot longer than this, maybe months. I often leave work for a year, feeling it hasn’t got any worth, then have a breakthrough after finding the draft and seeing something fresh I could do with it. There isn’t the time with the zine, no time to fuss.

I usually take a quick first look at a new batch of photos, and it’s always the one that first captures my attention that will spark the first poem. For the last issue, it was a photo of dusty slotted spoon found in a lost drawer (or should that be a drawer of lost things) found during a kitchen refit. The most unlikely items can be the most inspiring, such as a photo of a blank noticeboard at Berengrave Nature Reserve. I have mined memories triggered by the photos, as well as responded directly to the images in front of me. There is no selecting and rejecting of my work; Robin has been happy with everything I send him, so the only selection is at my end. I always have more drafted poems or prose pieces than I send him, and I don’t send work I am not happy with. The road to publication in the zine is short and straight, a far more pleasurable and less stressful journey than the usual submission process.

I have no idea of the circulation of the zine, only that it’s free and handed out locally to anyone who would like a copy, plus a few go out by post. I shall miss it when Robin finishes the project at the end of the year.

I made a decision some time ago not to search commissions or participation in events, to trust that they would come to me, and they have. Most recently, I was invited to write a poem for the Dickens 150 celebrations in Medway, and to be a guest writer at the Irish Writers in London Summer School, as well as take part in the zine project. I have two invitations to read my work in the offing, one where I hope to read some poems from the zine with Robin Halls’ images projected. I wonder what will come next, what 2022 will bring.

In the meantime, I await news of more traditional submissions, and must do some research on a story that needs to find a home. And I await November’s batch of photos from Robin. I shall have nothing, at first, then something will break through, something from the most unlikely image.

Robin’s photos can be seen on Instagram @robin.halls