Please click on the image for a bit of fun!
Yes I know, the picture is a bit strange. Then again, perhaps you haven’t really looked at it? Understandable. Poetry books sometimes have interesting cover art, but the poet rarely has much say in it. Thanks to being published by a small press with an open attitude, I persuaded them to use a photo I’d created myself.
I took this photo in my living room (the colour on the wall is French Grey from Farrow and Ball, in case you’re interested!) My idea was to assemble a ‘still life’ in the Dutch tradition of ‘vanitas’ paintings. ‘Vanitas’ being the genre of still life that is supposed to suggest the brevity of one’s time on this planet, and the futility of everything we strive for, since it has to end in death.
This isn’t as gloomy as it sounds, trust me! What I gathered together were pieces of memorabilia, items referenced in the poems, signifiiers… all arranged in such a way that I hope engenders a feeling of a life lived, in all its messiness, chaos, mistakes, serendipity, quirkiness and yes, beauty.
If you look closely you’ll see a Korean Coca-Cola bottle (I used to collect Coca-Cola cans and bottles from all the countries I visited through work!), burnt-out candles and a half-drunk glass of wine (I’ll leave you to decide on the significance of these), rotting fruit (=decay) and a fox’s skull (mostly in pieces). Skulls, and timepieces, are very common ‘vanitas’ tropes. There’s no clock or watch here, but I have included pages from work diaries, a (laminated) production timeline (we had a new product range every quarter), my old Filofax from the 1990s, even some pages from one of my teenage diaries. There are also photos of me as a Brownie and later as a jaded employee posing for yet another visa application. And let’s not gloss over the blister pack of paracetamol. Pills, childhood terrors, stupid work schedules and endless long-haul trips are well represented in the poems. As well as the internet, computers, magnolia flowers (artificial in this case) and ‘burning the candle at both ends’.
I hope this gives you a richer insight into the cover image, and perhaps more ways into the poems.
In case you’ve missed it, I’ve posted some notes on the poems here, and here you can listen to me reading a few of them.
More about The Mayday Diaries, and how to buy it, here.