Drowning Woman Poem Project
In the works - expected completion 2025/2026
This project was not scheduled or planned. It came about while I was taking a creative rest from big projects for 6 months (from January 2022). While I was playing with image-making I decided to create new pictures for the poem 'Drowning Woman' which is published in Letters to a Missing Woman (2020). My goal was to make a few images so I could put together a spoken-word and illustrated video of 'Drowning Woman'. It got out of hand, the images kept tumbling out and they began to tell me there was a story between and underneath the lines of the poem that I could not have imagined when I first wrote it in 2014. There was a goldmine of creative life I couldn't ignore so I let art lead the way and ended up with a collection of over 40 images. November 2024 I completed the first full draft of the story, creating an additional 48 images to inspire my writing and connection with the characters. I will be editing during 2025 aiming for completion by early 2026. My ambition is to put together a local exhibition and a visual book for the new story. At the end of this page is the full poem which acts as the bridge that spans my past and present relationship to the prose I penned prior to writing Letters to a Missing Woman.
The Characters
Poem - Drowning Woman 2014
The drowning woman is me
At first you are in shock that you are going down
Dragged under by what you thought defined you
It became the weight that pulled you into the depths
Rapidly you lost sight of the surface where you once felt safe and
could breathe
Then the deep claimed you – it wrapped its coils around you
Drew you with surprising speed and yet seemingly in slow motion
Like some disaster you witnessed but had no power to intervene
Not even an intervention for yourself
Because you just couldn’t move fast enough as your feet grew roots and
anchored you to the ground
Because your brain disengaged from the ability to react
It had reverted to some kind of out of body experience
Where you saw yourself ripped out of all sense of safety beyond the reach of
those close by
Even beyond your own reach as you finally stretched out a hand – though
delayed you still tried
But you were gone – the deep claimed you and drew you towards the
mysterious center
And for a moment but what seemed an age you hung suspended and the
choice was yours
Do you choose life, or do you surrender to the death that wants to
embrace you?
The embrace looks welcoming, more welcoming than one you’ve ever known
Life looks untenable to return to and be the same woman you
were once before
Yet you want to live all the same
Just as you are about to close your eyes, your breath now all spent
Knowing the next intake into your lungs will not be air but a final inhalation to end all exhalations
Where all breathing will cease to exist
And you will float in a beautiful kind of oblivion until you are no more
Suddenly you know what your choice is
And you kick over and over again the weight of your dead life free
Once released your downward momentum at its conclusion
Becomes the propelling and compelling overcomer of inertia pushing
you upwards
You break the surface with such force with the air hitting your lungs like a painful thaw
Though you reappear you are not the same for more happened in the deep than you can possibly name
Your visibility betrays the choice made far below the waves
For you chose both to live and die in one heartbeat
You are here and yet you are not
Part of you returned and part of you still remains
In that beautiful oblivion, safely buried, tethered like a balloon until that dead you is no more
No more than gently washed memory
Only you know who lies suspended deep down
Anchored to the person you thought you were or should be
And there you leave her to her drowning while you freely breathe with
new-born possibility
Photo Gallery
