The Mill, Old Town, Nr Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
Why are we attracted to such landscapes? Is it simply that they give us an insight into how people have used the landscape to satisfy their needs? Perhaps there is something deeper, something more abstract, something visual that provokes an emotional response to them.
Furthermore, it seems that exploitation and abandonment often appear to go together. But is an abandoned landscape always the result of exploitation? Is exploitation always bad for the landscape? Abandoning a landscape may allow it to recover, to throw off its shackles in a new beginning.
These are all questions that poets and other writers have long grappled with and, in doing so, have found beauty in such landscapes. They use language to paint a vivid picture of what they experience and it is their eyes to which the title of this work refers.
The work sets out to provide access to the writings of some of our poets by interpreting their words in images. I invite you to view the images and then further consider the questions posed by this study.