Offcumdens

‘Offcumden’ is a Yorkshire term for an incomer, a blow-in as they say in Ireland, someone living in the county who has arrived from elsewhere. It provides the title of a new book by photographer Bob Hamilton and poet Emma Storr, two Londoners who have made Yorkshire their home.

Bob’s black and white photographs celebrate the diversity of Yorkshire’s people and its landscapes. The photographs are paired with Emma’s poems. In the words of poet Philip Gross, “Each double page spread is a conversation – the eloquent understatement of black and white image leaving space for the warmth and sensitivity of the words. Together, they turn towards people and places with acute and generous attention. Offcumdens they may be, but Bob Hamilton and Emma Storr are returning Yorkshire to itself, with value added.”

Offcumdens takes us from city streets to bleak moorland, from a busking violinist to retired-millworker sisters, from the bottom of a limestone pothole to the visit of the Tour de France. There are notes on each subject at the back of the book, giving insight into whether it was photograph or poem that took the lead in the creative process. Background is also provided on where each photograph was taken and the story behind it. It’s all part of encouraging a three-way conversation between the reader, the image and the words.

Bob’s affection for Yorkshire dates back to his university days in the late seventies when he started making regular trips north in a minibus from London to the Yorkshire Dales. He fell in love with a hidden aspect of the county which even native residents only rarely get to see: its limestone caves and potholes. That was also where Bob’s first serious photography started, lugging a sturdy Praktica 35mm camera down in a watertight ammo box to take shots of the subterranean scenery.

Bob says he experienced an epiphany one particularly bright morning in winter, after he’d foolishly left his wetsuit in the minibus overnight. It was frozen solid. Ignoring the jibes of his friends, he chose to forsake that day’s underground expedition for a day of walking on Yorkshire’s hills instead. The views were fabulous. It was a revelation. When he subsequently walked the Dales Way and then ran the Three Peaks, his relationship with Yorkshire grew deeper. He fell in love with the landscape and also its people. In 1988, when the opportunity to relocate arose, Bob jumped at the chance to move to Ilkley. It’s been his home ever since, and always will be.

Emma admits she was a prejudiced southerner before moving to Leeds in 1993. She imagined a dark, industrial landscape with dour people and weather. It did not take long before she discovered her mistake. The people were welcoming, the landscape varied and, as a keen walker, she enjoyed the endless possibilities to explore the moors, coast and Dales. She also became fascinated by Yorkshire’s industrial heritage and history, wholeheartedly embracing her Viking roots in Yorkshire—Storr is a name of Scandinavian origin meaning strong or large. Emma says she would never now consider moving back south.

Offcumden

I didn’t know I’d fall in love with bleak:

the swerve of dry stone walls around the hills,

the fissured scars of rock above the fields.

I’d never found an ammonite before

one nudged its corrugations out of mud

and curled its spiral shell in my palm.

I’d never heard of words like wapentake,

or village names that twisted lips and tongue:

Yockenthwaite and Muker, Thorpe and Keld.

I didn’t know I’d leave the swarming south

for winter dark and outstretched summer days

to trace my Viking name on Whitby graves.

The genesis of Offcumdens can be traced back to when Bob and Emma first met at a poetry event at The Leeds Library in 2017. Bob introduced himself as a photographer and admitted to not being particularly interested in poetry, only having gone along to support a friend who was reading that night. When Emma located his website she was impressed enough by his street and landscape photography to get in touch. A germ of an idea had already taken form. She asked if she could write some poems inspired by his images. Intrigued to know what words she would find, he encouraged her to try. Somewhat to his surprise, the poems she produced spoke to him and they started to collaborate and experiment further. Emma usually wrote a poem in response to a photograph, but Bob also found photographs to pair with existing poems. Occasionally, going on expeditions together, the selection of a photograph and the words for a poem would evolve organically as a result of a shared encounter or experience. The project started to take shape.

From the very outset, both photographer and poet felt that the images should be black and white. Bob suggests that where a colour image is a representation, a monochrome image gets below the literal surface, pointing to something that’s not in the image itself but in our own experience. In that way, a black and white image is more akin to a poem. Emma stresses the importance of making her poetry accessible to readers. She enjoys using a variety of poetic forms and a mix of humour and poignancy in her writing. They both hope the combination of photographs and poems will reach a wider audience than either images or words could on their own. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

The result of Bob and Emma’s creative collaboration is a coffee-table book of 41 black and white images and poems published by Fair Acre Press in paperback and hardback editions. The launch event was held on March 17th at The Leeds Library, allowing the project to come full circle.

In the words of Yorkshire writer and broadcaster, Ian McMillan, “There’s a space; a liminal space, a creative space, an adventurous space and a surprising space where words and images meet and this superb book celebrates that exciting space.”

Offcumdens is available directly from the publisher, Fair Acre Press, or can be ordered through your local bookshop.