‘mother you display me as pearlescent’ - Kate Kennington Steer
‘Mother you display me as pearlescent’
Kate Kennington Steer
how old are you
who are held so delicately here?
how long has it taken you
to rise through rock or river
to cloud and clump
to condense and fall
to come to cling here, exactly here
as this bonded globe ?
above, the vertical gush gutters,
continues the thunderous disruption
of angels dancing,
below, ripples insist horizontantal
circularity, until,
rainswelled
a rumpled mess overbrims
your own excitement
and enthuses the tapestry,
enraptures the carpet
transfuses detritus into tiffany foils
until what lies below
is enabled to rise
until colour is once more
redeemed
________________
Mother
you display me as pearlescent
your rhythms elude me
as I watch the sunrise spiral
breast and brace against its past,
become undulation
to meet and dissipate and build
you say:
I am no mere light-weight
consider my heft, I am molten
able to be moulded, my path
can be directed
but I leave my mark
you can see where I have coursed
I entrap oxygen to serve me
her billows subside into my waves
my shadows are indigo
my highlights saffron
I am teal and rust and ochre
I am petrol and meadow and lavender
________________
how deep does your dreaming go?
how wide do the ripples edge?
who is it bends out to connect with you,
reflects your desire back toward touching distance?
are you content to remain in the shallows?
________________
lead me to the water
to those weeping fissures
mapped across my bones, my breath
and let me hear her
flood my rushed soul
________________
these are your Mother’s pearls -
each single drop
beyond any merchant’s wild extravagant price
Kate Kennington Steer is a disabled writer, contemplative photographer, and visual artist. Following a residency at the New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham, in 2023 and a bursary from DAiSY (Disability Arts In Surrey), Kate is working on the bright-+/well project: a large series of works, combining photography, printing, painting and poetry examining wellbeing and the built environment. Progress can be seen at https://www.instagram.com/katekenningtonsteer/. Kate’s first solo exhibition, ‘episodes’, at Farnham Pottery (July-August 2022) featured digital paintings made whilst experiencing FND seizures. Most recently, her work was exhibited at ’Guildford House Open’, Guildford House Gallery; ‘Daisy-Chain’, The Lightbox, Woking; ‘Glimmers’, New House Art Space, Guildford; at ‘Kintsugi’, Vernon House, Farnham. She irregularly blogs at imageintoikon and publishes poetry at epiphanyoftheordinary. Her Facebook iPhone photography project ‘acts of daily seeing’ has been running since 2015. Short films combining her writing, photography, and digital paintings can be found @katekenningtonsteer on YouTube.
