This week dropping in is Sharon Larkin, author of the thoughtful and perceptive Dualities.

Hi Nigel – thank you for this opportunity to say a few words about one of my poems from Dualities.

I’ve chosen the poem ‘On not Making a Scene’ a quarter of the way into the collection. Most people will be familiar with the paintings of Edward Hopper and, in particular, the work entitled ‘Room in New York’ that inspired this ekphrastic poem.The dual themes of relationship differences and individual disassociation are set out for all to see in the painting. And these are themes that spar with each other through the collection, I think.

My first degree combined literature and art history so ‘reading a painting’ and ‘painting scenes with words’ are pretty much second nature to me. I’m never without a camera on daily walks and a number of my poems in…