[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

Hello Fliss, and lovely to e-meet you,

Thank-you very much for introducing me to your lovely word-bird, too. What a beautiful companion. And I'm glad you like my avatar. I use her in the work, too, and across a range of platforms. But she only bears books here.

Also thank-you for such a careful and honest reading of the image. The time you spent with it is much appreciated, and your reading is very reassuring, too, as it's saying some of the things I want it to say. It's the first time I've workshopped an image, but workshopping my poetry here has helped it, so I took the plunge. I find it tricky to detach the words from the images but this one was defn more 'art' than 'poetry'.

This is a digital collage. I used multiple out-of-copyright images and blended them together, presenting them in different contexts (rarely warping them) to see if I can build a new narrative/ alt-artefact from older narrative/images. In doing this, I hope to re-imagine some of the old narratives whilst not throwing them out with the bathwater.

Palimpsests. Histories layered up. I was thinking about Dante, too, but wasn't trying to reflect him particularly - I don't know enough about his writing - although I have read 'Inferno' and 'Purgatorio' ( but not 'Paradise') ages ago- in translation - not very cleverly read, either - but I think once you start going underground into circles he's difficult to escape!

For this one, I used base images that were (generally male/white) centres of power (the courtroom, the palace - if you look at the 'base' it's actually a frescoed ceiling). That's the 'establishment' bit, inverted and subverted!

And Victorian tourist contraptions, all juxtaposed with a central image of a very old (I think Roman, but undated in the image) underground waterway, with a peasant family washing their clothes in the water (here watched by the frescoed palace ceiling and watched by the judges in the courtroom.)

The deer-headed tourists, the owl and the mouse are all creatures that populate my imaginary landscape, and I might have to lose them as I think they probably don't add much to the image, apart from locating it in - possibly a bit of a cliched - surrealist narrative. They are my contemporary tourists, though. And the fact you liked the owl - found them grounding images, makes me think I should probably keep them.

I am typing too much, anyway. But it helps me think through where this go next, and thank-you very much indeed for looking at this - it's really helpful as I move forwards with possible ideas for these - there are more of them but I don't want to send them out until I'm sure that they're working.

Take care, and here's an ampersand for your word-bird to nibble on later (&)

Sarah-Jane