Excerpt - Room portraits
‘Memories gather in little shrines. Some are discarded, some tag along with us, becoming touchstones, votives, catch alls, congregate on shelves, alcoves, sills, charms forged for dialogues with the dead in an abandoned séance. To remind us those days are over, why is it they are over a
t the time one most needs their possibilities a
nd the possibilities were all about the place w
hen one didn’t need them?’’
ROOM PORTRAITS
“The children sit on the staircase watch and listen silently to stolen ideas, specious attributions, idolatry of false gods. The Great Gatsby of the village pub. There, in the room a derivative Barbara Hepworth, a cheeky Lichtenstein imitation. Appropriation of the talents while ambition grows. A secretive house, known to all”
ROOM PORTRAITS
“The writer of the book of books, master of the procrastinating deadline, his mysterious unavailability to answer the call, he is talking bills, school fees, Welsh gossip, Senior Service supplies, off licence invoices, schadenfreude, Old Testament curses, call again please”
ROOM PORTRAITS
“The writer borrows from sources whose evidence is concealed in the snaggle bookcase. The inscription in the book of books quotes Bernard Kops and Luigi Pirandello with references to psychomancy and cristallamania.
The closing lines siphoning off Scott Fitzgerald and the green light, instead becoming a gaudy banner. A deity of conjurors has bound the author of the book of books, his talismans or amulets. Shamans”
ROOM PORTRAITS
“The children sup the heritage of Gwraig Gyfarwydd – Aunty Betty, Aunty Mary, Aunty Martha and Aunty Mabel, whose images are everywhere and nowhere. There are no names on photographs to distinguish them from any Celtic waning tribe”
ROOM PORTRAITS
“Only the past remains whole, moving further and further away, taking our youth, our hopes, and finally love, until in time they all appear to merge, like a gaudy banner we had once tried to defend and, beaten back, had to abandon..”
ROOM PORTRAITS
IMAGES ©️Becky Nuttall 2026