Lavendar, in Laurie’s kitchen

Maybe you’ve noticed, down in the comments section of the blog, that every day in 2012 there was a haiku?

My dear friend Laurie Jameson wrote those for me. It was her idea, and she committed to writing a haiku every day in 2012. Her words give a different insight into the image and I have enjoyed seeing the pictures again through her eyes.

Laurie’s one-year term as the Poet in Residence here at One Day | One Image is over, and I wanted to thank her for everything that she’s done for the blog this year.

I also want to thank her for pivotal role she’s played in my development as an artist. I met Laurie in 1996 at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada, through our mutual friend Andy Wilkinson. At the time, Laurie was working as a poet, documenting her life on a ranch in Colorado. We struck up a correspondence, using actual letters (which sounds quaint nowadays!) and this is what started to happen: I’d write her a letter about something I’d done, she’d write back and say “that was a good story – you should write a poem about it.” Then I’d say “you’re kidding – it was a story about a silver spoon I bought at a thrift store” and then she’d write a lovely poem about it.*

Eventually it started to dawn on me that I ought to be the one writing the poems and I started taking my first shaky steps as a writer. She was at my side the first time I read one of my poems in public, at a writing workshop a few years later in Elko, when I was so nervous I nearly forgot how to breathe. And, when I had a poem published in an actual book , she came with me to Denver for a reading at the Tattered Cover bookstore. (I was still nervous, but did remember to breathe!)

I know that my current interest in photography would not have happened without Laurie’s encouragement of my (hidden) artistic side. She helped me learn how to identify that itchy feeling that means something creative is about to happen, and she encouraged me not to ignore it. I’ve realized that I am lot more content with myself when I am being creative, even if the creativity itself seems very hard.

So, thanks to Laurie for everything she’s done for me. Please stop by her website to see what she’s doing now. Drop her a line, too, if you want, and tell her I sent you.

And, for those of you who follow The Poetry of Photography, it’ll stick around for a while longer. Back in the spring, I gave the images and poems their own blog, The Poetry of Photography, where they got equal billing. If you haven’t found this blog already, head on over there – I will keep updating it every couple of days until I’ve run out of haiku

* Actual example.