A project with two narratives.
Photographs taken in the greenhouses of the Botanics in Edinburgh. Man-made forms appear organic, and plant structures and shapes suggest functionality, as if branching stems were pumping heat through the building, and metal pipes and thermometers growing, moving to the light.
Poetry is the other narrative. Fragments of conversations overhead during lockdown, such as the final poem The Temperate House, after which the book is named. Temperate mean mild, moderate. If you are a temperate person, you are calm, reasonable.
Other poems in the book are autobiographical, document a period of personal change. Rather than curbed, disciplined and inhibited as the word suggests, this is rather about locating the measure of the self, establishing the range, climate and degree needed for growth.
Coming in 2024.
