A Precipitation of Fallen Angels 2012 | India ink, gouache and graphite on Hahnemühle paper | 75cm x 55cm

I have worked allusively in relation to poetic texts for most of my professional life. I suppose the first was T.S. Eliot, and I have correspondence with Valerie Eliot on that matter (she told me Eliot didn’t like the idea of a direct relationship between text and image).

I made a series of images relating to Seamus Heaney’s ‘From the Republic of Conscience’, written for Amnesty International, and the poet, in correspondence, was enthusiastic about the resulting images.

The poet who has captivated me in a sustained manner is J.H. Prynne, with whom I have maintained a written correspondence, but after all these years we have still not met.

‘Star Damage at Home’, ‘The White Stones’ and ‘Biting the Air’ are Prynne texts that have evoked a visual response from myself. Jeremy also has one of my works. ‘A Precipitation of Fallen Angels’ is a reference to Coleridge’s 1802 journal, in which he writes about the alleviation of depression in the presence of a waterfall and describes this as ‘a precipitation of fallen angels’.