How Photography Inspires Writing

  • How Photography Inspires Writing

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    How Photography Inspires My Writing

    By Simona Carini

    On January 18, 2016, walking around North Berkeley, I was brought to a halt by the look of a house: the right and left side were painted in different colors and the overall effect was that of a line bisecting the façade. I took a photo and resumed my walk but kept thinking about the house. At home, I wrote down what I had seen and the musings the sight had stirred, then distilled the material into my first poem “The Divorced House” which was published in the journal, Star 82 Review, together with the photo.

    At the time, I had been writing for almost 10 years, mostly about food and more recently memoir. Poetry was a new endeavor. As I developed my style and voice, I continued using my photos as writing prompts. I still do.

    I start by describing the image, not only the visual details, but smells, sounds, things I touched or that touched me, and/or the situation that led to the photo being taken. While I free-write I may remember something I felt or thought when the image was taken, or a story may emerge. Ultimately, the poem needs to transcend the description to a deeper theme, a shared emotion. What is the story? Why am I telling it? The process may remain a writing exercise, still useful as it helps me focus on sensory details.  

    I usually don’t know where writing about an image will lead me. The bisected house in Berkeley made me think about my parents’ divisions which affected my early life.

    Taking photographs for me is a way of taking notes. A photo helps me remember what I saw and what I felt. As writer I am a hoarder: of sights, sounds, smells, flavors, textures. I gather sensory details and musings and store them for immediate or future use.

    A bench overlooking the Pacific Ocean photographed on a foggy day (so that it appears to overlook nothingness) led me to think about refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea not being allowed to rest when they arrive wherever the waves pushed them. “The Bench” was published with the inspiring photo in Star 82 Review.

    The cover of my recently published poetry collection, Survival Time, features the photo that inspired the opening poem: It shows the inside of Lærdal Tunnel, in Norway. The poem references the experience of driving through that tunnel and weaves into it the experience of my husband’s cancer diagnosis. At some point the poem describes what the photo shows but in the broader context of the life event for which it is a metaphor.

    “December 31” (originally published in Italian Americana) is about the time I spent the last afternoon of 2018 on the beach of Pismo Beach, CA, bathed in glorious sunset colors, watching surfers ride the last waves of the year, and observing shorebirds. The poem describes them and meditates on breathing and death, as the year is about to die:

    The end

    arrives with our last breath. A long sigh the last

    sound we make. We carry nothing with us,

    not even a gulp of air. Will I, on the final

    exhale, remember kindness in your gaze?

    Simona Carini was born in Perugia, Italy. She writes poetry and nonfiction and has been published in various venues, in print and online.

    Her first poetry collection, Survival Time ,  was published in 2022 by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. She lives in Northern California with her husband, loves to spend time outdoors, and works as an academic researcher.

    Marlene C

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  • Memory of a ‘giorno dei morti’ in Italy

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Memory of a ‘giorno dei morti’ in Italy

    by Simona Carini

    What I remember most about that day is the cold wind. It was blowing strongly, and yet it could not push away the heavy low clouds and wipe the sky clear, so it was dark in the early afternoon. The cypresses lining the gravel path from the cemetery’s heavy iron gate to the chapel swayed as if wailing unconsolably. A group of people had walked the narrow road from the village to the cemetery in a procession led by the priest, Don Gabriele, imposing in his black cassock, which swirled around his legs at the mercy of the biting wind.

    A child then, I was terrified not of the cemetery, which I had been visiting regularly with my father since an early age, but of the elements: the wind could topple trees or tombstones, make pots and vases tumble from columbaria, and if it stopped, the low clouds would weep torrents of rain on us. I had accompanied my aunt Lucia to the ceremony. She was rapt in devoted prayer, while I observed the other villagers and wondered why nobody looked concerned.

    The prayer came to the closing “Amen” and all we could hear was the wind. I thought the shared part was over and I could walk with my aunt to our family’s vault and the stories it held and told, stories I never got tired of hearing. But in a gloomy, bass voice, Don Gabriele started singing over the wind:

    “Dies irae, dies illa …”

    I froze.

    “He’s conjuring up ghosts,” I thought.

    I wanted to run away but could not move. I knew we were honoring the dead and it would have been disrespectful to leave the ceremony, but why did it have to be so scary?

    Never again did I go with Aunt Lucia to the cemetery on November 2nd and in my mind on the Day of the Dead the sky is always blotted out by a mass of pewter clouds, the wind blows hard, and God is angry.

    Born in Perugia, Italy, Simona Carini writes poetry and nonfiction and has been published in various venues, in print and online, including Intima – A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Italian Americana, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Star 82 Review, the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, the American Journal of Nursing. She lives in Northern California with her husband and works as a data scientist at an academic research institution.

    Marlene C

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