The art of macro photography; the power of magnifying the intricacies of nature, of people and their features, whether perfect or flawed. Of objects natural and man-made, that we find in our homes and scattered everywhere. The harnessing of their simplicity through a camera lens, and the ability to contort the image from its typical perception, in order to create a mood, an impression. A message.

A new reality.

It is this ability for the photographer to see his subject, not as a whole, but as whole pieces. Individual slivers, like slices of fresh fruit. Each piece can stand alone, each a true representation of the greater sphere. And, just as photographers do, perhaps poets should view their subject matters in the same way. After all; is poetry not formed from the smallest emotional triggers, acute sensations; the viewing of a classically ordinary object in unusual lighting, or depicted in an unusual scenario? The flicker of a scene in dreams, the velvet curtains only half raised.

Abstract artists, in particular, have this instinct of looking at the world in fragments, polaroids, separating the concrete nature of the object, and dividing it into its emotional and mechanical parts. Joan Miro particularly utilized this technique, seeing an object in lines and colours, and feeling the life beating beneath it. A complex building of glass, with a single flag waving from its roof becomes an angular mass of blue, silver, and yellow, with the flag a fluttering block of colours that seem to move as your eyes are drawn to it.

It is this surreality that can distract and shock, twisting the world we see on its head, through clever camera angles, light tricks, painterly styles, abstract images formed in words and structure. Contentment becomes discontentment. Anguish becomes elation.

Poetry may already be intense, but what better way to intensify it than to drawn attention to only a fraction of the entirety, drawing the eyes and the mind inwards and tricking the brain into ignoring its instinct; to see an object or a person, or even a landscape as a whole. To break down something into its smallest cells and atoms is to bring out the harmonies of feelings that such an object creates. Does a bird reflected in an iris make us feel liberated, or trapped? Is the eye longing for freedom, or is the bird wishing to see as the eye does? Are they one and the same? Whichever perception the brain picks out, the picture beyond the frame, or in this case; the pieces that poetry leaves blank, allows our mind to flourish. This freedom from reality can ultimately return us to it, by simplifying our ideas of it.

An emotion, a single word. A macro poem, in which the reader can paint his own picture, sparking sensations and thoughts that a detailed, rollercoaster ride of feelings would not create, as all the creation would already have been achieved with words. What creates a stronger message; a short, one hundred word speech filled with motivation, power, and of course ambition, or a volume that wavers away from the true message so much that, by the half-way point, the message is already forgotten.

We are all driven by emotions, deeply embedded within us, so what better way to understand and accept them, than to set them free on a piece of art?