Welcome to my galleries. I'm a writer and digital artist living in London - occasionally a performing poet and short film-maker, too. I have a long track-record as an author of books: most on cultural issues but my latest, "Dead People on Holiday", represents a ten-year fusion of my own poetry and imagery. Feel free to contact me on stephen_jacks58@hotmail.com.
Originally I was trained in Psychology and Philosophy, but my work tended to be in journalism and for television.
Yes: my images are for sale (just ask) and yes, I welcome commissions and ideas for mutual collaborations.
Originally I was trained in Psychology and Philosophy, but my work tended to be in journalism and for television.
Yes: my images are for sale (just ask) and yes, I welcome commissions and ideas for mutual collaborations.
DAY AND NIGHT
It’s night, when one needs love like blood,
And a city is an iceberg of lights,
The air throbs, roars like a distant bear.
The finger of one’s mind, in indolence,
Retraces the schema of old streets
Their excess of purpose – redundant as
Antique newsprint. Ilike to sense this imprint of
Bustling, forgotten hands: the surfeit of detail in afrosted
Frieze, or else a silent mausoleum in its zone;
With dolls’ house windows that will not surrender
My own reflection. Ilike it all.
As a child, I wore my life like a nettle
I looked out with blistery eyes
As if a scourge (as if one scourged)
Not wanting to be found.
Of late, I’m more resilient.
I watch this house of mine fall dark:
I draw it round me.
Outside, perhaps, a crusting of friendships
Of issues grown pale – or rather, simply remote.
I remember now. Ithappened one afternoon.
There’d been a downpour. Briefly, the clouds parted,
And in the blaze, the city shone as if pearl
For a moment, as if cleansed - as if life itself had been
Cleansed - all purged, all forgiven. For a moment, I felt
Glad to share what was soundless, timeless:
Proud to be there.
It is my shame to be different
But I don’t know how to live in bad faith.
I wish I could walk among the rest, be one of the rest
Find my solace in a seamless absurdity, but rather,
Those shackles have slipped away. For me, you see,
There is a dissonance in one’s heart, if one has purpose:
A tension, or a null that must be fed:
One needs to have some private absurd -
Some folly dimly grasped, givingone the appetite to carry on;
There’s nothing left, oncevision and apathy melt together, resigning one,
In lean despotic light, to be anoutsider at life’s busy midnight feast.
Spare me the sun, this glazed horizon, this eternal present.
How frivolous is life, if shorn of meaning
How short a life, how long a day.
Stephen Jackson
It’s night, when one needs love like blood,
And a city is an iceberg of lights,
The air throbs, roars like a distant bear.
The finger of one’s mind, in indolence,
Retraces the schema of old streets
Their excess of purpose – redundant as
Antique newsprint. Ilike to sense this imprint of
Bustling, forgotten hands: the surfeit of detail in afrosted
Frieze, or else a silent mausoleum in its zone;
With dolls’ house windows that will not surrender
My own reflection. Ilike it all.
As a child, I wore my life like a nettle
I looked out with blistery eyes
As if a scourge (as if one scourged)
Not wanting to be found.
Of late, I’m more resilient.
I watch this house of mine fall dark:
I draw it round me.
Outside, perhaps, a crusting of friendships
Of issues grown pale – or rather, simply remote.
I remember now. Ithappened one afternoon.
There’d been a downpour. Briefly, the clouds parted,
And in the blaze, the city shone as if pearl
For a moment, as if cleansed - as if life itself had been
Cleansed - all purged, all forgiven. For a moment, I felt
Glad to share what was soundless, timeless:
Proud to be there.
It is my shame to be different
But I don’t know how to live in bad faith.
I wish I could walk among the rest, be one of the rest
Find my solace in a seamless absurdity, but rather,
Those shackles have slipped away. For me, you see,
There is a dissonance in one’s heart, if one has purpose:
A tension, or a null that must be fed:
One needs to have some private absurd -
Some folly dimly grasped, givingone the appetite to carry on;
There’s nothing left, oncevision and apathy melt together, resigning one,
In lean despotic light, to be anoutsider at life’s busy midnight feast.
Spare me the sun, this glazed horizon, this eternal present.
How frivolous is life, if shorn of meaning
How short a life, how long a day.
Stephen Jackson
Welcome to my galleries. I'm a writer and digital artist living in London - occasionally a performing poet and short film-maker, too. I have a long track record as an author of books: most on cultural issues but my latest, "Dead People on Holiday", represents a ten-year fusion of my own poetry and imagery. Feel free to contact me on stephen_jacks58@hotmail.com
Yes: my images are for sale (just ask) and I welcome commissions or ideas for mutual collaborations. Followers here are welcome too; for as the poet always seems to say, "I don't bite."
Yes: my images are for sale (just ask) and I welcome commissions or ideas for mutual collaborations. Followers here are welcome too; for as the poet always seems to say, "I don't bite."
Now to look at some people and persons and former partners, and their traces in the spaces they once filled...
I was originally trained as a psychologist and some of my work still concerns the plight of the Outsider: those supposedly lost souls without whom the cultural, scientific (and to a certain extent, visionary political) legacy of the West would actually be nothing. Immediately above this caption we have "A Brief History of Psychiatry" and right above that, a modest number entitled, "Nil by Mouth".
