Ellen Harold
Dusk collapses in misshapen heaps.
Drowning in pale blues and heavy umber,
the patterns o historic roadworks, set alight under glowing eaves.
Sea air whips thistle and gorse asunder.
Lonely, I stroll, heeding a distant figure neath dust thick air.
Lost amongst foreign roads and the haze of drink.
A croaked call, soft as sea mist: “There must be something you can spare”
I freeze, fazed. Catch those gaunted features and eyes brimmed with swirling black ink.
I try to think, she simply stares.
Rough linen scrapes my arm, her hands burn with frost.
My coat was heavy, I could survive the sea air.
A glance, a shrug. My coat was gone, the stranger lost.
Three days passed, I saw that cloth on unmarked stone.
I left it there, in an abbey. Abandoned and overgrown.
Ellen Harrold is an artist focused on the human connection to science and nature. She is currently completing a master’s degree in Art, Science, and Visual thinking at Dundee University and has received a bachelors degree in Fine Art from IADT in Dublin. A core aspect of her practice is the use of painting, drawing, text, and textiles to explore the connection between decay and renewal in the world around us. She is currently focused on how scientific understanding was, and continues to be, understood through the lens of art and storytelling. She has taken part in IADT student shows such as New Translations in IMMA (2019), On Show in IADT (2022) and Propositions in IADT (2022). She has recently published both written and visual work in New Feathers Anthology, Honeyguide Literary, and Paddler Press; as well as publishing her first book ‘Aesthetics and Conventions of Medical Art’.
