Page 23 - Expanding horizons (pictorial poetry) 27-8-18

Research Paper on Pictorial Poetry

K C Sethi

Being a photography hobbyist and a frequent traveler, I have come across so many people, subjects, objects and faces of nature when I capture them in my camera.
Sometimes, I feel talking to my pictures ; they seem responding me too and leave impressions on my heart .I can hear the whispers of my photographs and its subjects ,
objects which tell me the stories of their life .They arrest my attention and make me feel their presence in my words, lines and poems.
“Sometimes I feel pictures though being silent, speak much more than the words, lines and poems do"
I can find them swinging, enjoying, sometimes sobbing, weeping and crying in my poems silently because the characters involved in the pictures represent their moods
and expressions which compel me to behave similarly in my words and poems. A close description of a picture reveals its own story which I convert into my compositions.
“Silent poems, speaking pictures” perhaps will not be wrong definition of this novice concept. But I have named it,” Pictorial Poetry” wherein it is found that the body
language of a picture I based on the theme of a poem, are published in a combination. They seem as if soul (poem) and body (picture) of a composition describing their
tales.
As a painting, so a poem : This benevolent concept of “Pictorial Poetry “leaves a great impact on my heart and mind when one eye on visual and the other on verse make
me feel the soul of my creation in my soul. I have gone through poetical history of Leonard Barkan, a great poet, famous for his great compilation 'Mute Poetry, Speaking
Pictures,' in 18th century. His works are the relationship between the verbal and the visual. Barkan's title derives from an ancient saying “Painting is mute poetry, or poetry
a speaking picture.” Later it was framed with a beautiful Latin tag “” which means: “As a painting, so a poem,” implying, “a poem is or will be or should be like a painting.” :
Along with my wife, Mrs. Sunita Sethi started compiling first coffee table book with pictorial poetry in 2013. It took two years to complete and was published on 23rd
December 2015 which gave birth to new style of writing photographic poetry in the frame of coffee table book and made a world record of being the first coffee table book
on this beautiful concept in the world as accepted and declared by Golden Book of World Records, Asia Book of Records and India book of Records. In recent years, art
history and art theory have been obsessively investigating the intricate relationship between image and ideology, the ways we see and interpret pictures, narration and
theatricality in painting, literary pictorialism in poetry and the iconology and semiotics of art. This detail study of pictures and painting leads to new world of writing poetry
and articles with picture or based on the characters in the pictures /photographs.

Poetry on blackboard: I recollect my college times when our English teacher Late Mr. Satish Chander Khosla had been teaching us poetry by describing poems on the
blackboard by drawing images of the situation and illustrating the beauty of nature and other things involved in poetry.“Daffodils' a poem of William Wordsworth and 'Ode
on Grecian Urn' by Johan Keats took a week to explain and complete. Even after 40 years, I feel the fragrance of his beautiful drawings and poetry.
At present this new way of expressing one's feelings and thoughts has already achieved its heights in social media like Face book, Instagram, What's App and so many

10 K.C. Sethi, Sunita Sethi Bliss 11