Artistic collaboration in the written word is surprisingly rare. For all postmodernity’s declarations about the death of the author, poetry in particular has upheld some facade of the artist as solitary genius. The relationship between poet and muse may be more familiar, but the poet’s act of creation is still perceived to occur in isolation. The bard becomes an alchemist, taking elusive combinations of words and through some sorcery transforming them into a tangible object, a poem on the page.

This makes the collaborative work of poet Jillian Pattinson and her brother David, a photographer, something special. The selection ‘The Night God Introduces Fox and Cat to Crow’ is taken from an exhibition entitled ‘The Still Point’, which was held at Stefano’s Gallery in Mildura earlier this year. Using existing photographs or poems as starting points, the siblings set about creating new works in response. The result was a series of twenty-three photos and nineteen poems; there are also audio recordings of the poems.