The exhibition TU : PLEI will be open 20-25 July 2021 at Stroud Brewery, 9am-5pm.
© Maria Stadnicka, 22nd July 2021
During supper at our usual tavern
it reeks of furniture polish. At six o’clock
waiters dust the old piano then serve
wine out of bleached carafes.
Two past seven. Room temperature
eighteen Celsius. Twenty-three guests
order the same main course.
Those seated by the piano need
face coverings. They ask for salt
and spare cutlery. Twenty past seven.
The kitchen door opens
four times in twelve minutes.
There is a power cut when guest B
finishes the lamb chops.
The waiters bring out fire-safe candles.
Guests A and C reach for matches.
No-one speaks.
© Maria Stadnicka June 2021
Excerpt from the sequence Hermit Age.
Photograph © Saul Leiter
Dreamed we were eating
pasta with mud and no-one
complained that earth lacked
seasoning. Yes, thank you,
since you ask, I will have
another portion of this.
At present it makes life
bearable.
© Maria Stadnicka, June 2020
At the end of Week #11, the lockdown measures started to ease off, amid concerns over increase in the ‘R’ number. From 0.7 to 1.1. Some schools are still closed, but some cafes are open for business. The #BlackLivesMatter movement was marked by protests in many towns and cities, including Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Overall, it rained, it yelled, it poured, it angered, then things carried on as usual.
© Maria Stadnicka, June 2020
Photography © John Stadnicki, June 2020, Midlands, UK
Photography: © John Stadnicki, May 2020
You wander countless streets
pass a pandemic that seems
to go on forever.
But nothing is eternal.
Photography © John Stadnicki, 2020
Rite
Sunday lingers on scent of paint,
tobacco and spring. Our kitchen-war
sprouts from a conversation on books
about people we both know. I say
I’d met doctor Zhivago queuing
at Nero’s, heard him asking a barista
about the fate of taiga-trees
at the height of a mining season.
You think they are cut short then stop
growing. I lock my paperbacks
in a cupboard; they remind us
of all the ink twisted in verse, seeded
in layers of gravel. Our verbs reach
the pit of a quarry, and seal over.
Snow forests shoot up in tears,
we trip over extension cables in our flat.
© Maria Stadnicka, May 2020
Photography: © John Stadnicki 2020
Photography © John Stadnicki, May 2020
Photography © John Stadnicki, 2020
