Flax tops all

Woke just over a half hour before sunrise and decided to head out for an early morning run. started by walking briskly, until the legs told my brain they were fed up and I broke into a gentle run. Pauses for photos, including this one taken when I was in a wee park at the corner of Russell Street  and Wood Street in Ponsonby. This is on the eastward slope from the Ponsonby Ridge, so it offers an unobstructed view over to the city centre and the tower blocks occupied by the capitalists (largely).

I liked the way that the two flax flower spikes which I included in taking the photo, reflect on one side the Sky Tower and the tower blocks, and on the other the cranes which are busy throughout the week adding more buildings to the central city. Even better is the perspective that suggests that the vertical flax spike is higher than the Sky Tower. Plants rule.

The process of choosing the photos to illustrate my presentation at the Class Reunion has stimulated a return to choosing photos to illustrate a small collection of S' poems. We had started working last year on matching a poem and a photo. It is now some years since Kendall told us about "Blue Moon Over Thurman Street", a collaboration between Ursula K Le Guin and Roger Durband (photographer). I managed to find a used copy in good condition, which I bought, and have enjoyed.

Kendall started a project to collect photos for a “One Street” group, which appealed to quite a number of us, and I have added almost 200 photos taken on, from , or adjacent to Ponsonby Road (this one is a bit far down the side of the ridge to qualify). My personal tag (wps_ponsonby_road) will find them, if anyone is interested.

More recently, S and I realised that while some of my photographs have stimulated her poetic creativity, few of those were on Ponsonby Road. We decided that we would be more successful in a poetry and photography collaboration by each choosing favourites from our own work and trying to find a “match” for the other’s choice. Finding a photo that is suggested in some way by one of her poems, and which I would choose, and which S would also choose, is time consuming. And enjoyable.