Poetic Words & Underwater Photographs by Mallory Morrison

We are fueled by words and paint. Fingertips laced with creativity. Guilty of it, and gleefully covered by it like a delicious down blanket. 

We see synchronicity in creative mediums. We see patterns of thought in a writer's poems intersecting with the movements of a visual artist's creative lines on the other side of the world. We thought to share when we find patters in a poem matching the energy of a painting. Below is our first start.

All artworks are for sale on Art Urbane, however, the writer's work paired with the artist is not. Perhaps this will change in the future. For now, please follow the writer, like their work, buy their books. It takes time to craft a good poem, each word is placed and thoughtfully communicated, sometimes painfully. Support these creative writers; they are artists with words. 

As a company, we have a commitment to creative professions, to making them a lucrative lifestyle... because beauty should be supported, for it is as much a necessary good to our lives as water.  

For our poetry selections, we try to feature at least one living poet. 

Enjoy the artworks by Mallory Morrison, and the accompanying select poems by living poet Emma and deceased poets, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, and Muriel Rukeyser. 

Artwork title: The Deep

Underwater by Emma

The dark is present

All around me
I'm not afraid of the dark
Not the kind in your bedroom at night
Not the kind that lurks in shadows

But I am afraid
Of the dark that consumes one's heart
Of the dark that prowls in my very mind

January slipped it's finger
Down my spine
As I slip
Further down
Further down underwater

As I float downwards
I think of this darkness
The one present
Right now
My eyelids slowly close
And I am left with the dark
And the sounds of underwater

Read more works by Emma.

Artwork title: Embrace

Artwork title: Hereafter

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich

 excerpt from original poem

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Read more by Adrienne Rich.



Artwork title: Equilibrium