From the recurring German photographer and poet Anne Kulou, we present a new series of monochromatic visuals and nature-focused poetry.
Artist’s Note:
“Photography and poetry are anchors for me. They return me to contact—away from everyday noise, social ambiguity, and the constant negotiation of words that can make me lose the thread of myself.
As an autistic person with ADHD, I don’t primarily seek ‘expression.’ I seek attunement: a way of meeting the world that is quieter than conversation and more true than explanation. I go out and use my senses. Wind and rain, a bird cutting through the sky, and also the human-made things—each becomes a gateway.
What I’m drawn to is what lives behind language: the shared field of sensation and emotion where we recognize each other without having to translate. In my work, I look for the part in my fellow beings that is universal—grief, awe, longing, tenderness, stillness. The place where we are the same and therefore able to meet.
If my poems lean toward the mystical, it’s because the world is. When I slow down enough, everything is connected; everything responds. My submission is an invitation into that space.”
Westward
Anne Kulou
Earth-laden air.
Yellow-grey cloud cotton
hanging low—
borne on the east wind.
Slanted light
from the sinking sun:
chimney bricks glow,
moss frays from the mortar joints.
A blackbird on the aerial.
The wind lifts her feathers.
She looks around—
then gone.
I breathe in deep,
think of you,
look westward:
to where the clouds go.
Deep Waters
anne kulou
Read between the lines.
Listen to the unsaid—
my heart.
My words—
distracting
and insufficient
when it comes to you.
They interrupt
the delicate and continuous
movement
of the waves
spreading evenly into infinity
from the center
of the deep waters
of my soul.
Since you—
Since… you
fell
into my heart.
The Rock
anne kulou
It was a day suited to staring into the world absent-minded.
Without judgment.
Leaning inward.
Absorbing.
Taking it all in.
Aloof, yes—perhaps.
But not ignorant.
No, not that.
Rather: receiving the nameless gift that has always been giving itself—
offering its invisible branches,
holding me like a web,
connecting me to my source.
At last.
“For how long have I done deeds in vain?”
I ask the rock in the field where I linger.
“Used words like good and evil, true and false—
not accepting the invitation to the vast space in between.
Not listening?”
O, how weary I am.
“I wish I were you,” I say, contemplating.
Motionless. Stoic. Yet not indifferent.
Always part of the whole.
Exposed to the elements—
to storms and rain, enduring them,
to streams and currents, sculpted by them,
and to the sun, warming my solid body.
Uninvolved involvement.
And I sense the silent communion
with flora and fauna,
with the hills and plains,
the waters and groves surrounding me.
Such beauty permeates my firmness—
laid-back beauty.
Fathomless beauty.
Hush, they whisper…
And I fall into grace.
—
How to Join in Again?
Part of me would love for you to find me in the stillness.
But I feel it is only mine.
See, as much as I long to be that rock—
to vanish, to shut out the voices circling around futile things—
I might want you to join me.
Yet how can a rock of this speak?
If I could become a cloud—
less dense, you see?—
then my sphere and yours could intertwine.
Your particles and mine,
like lock and key to each other—
an infinite number of bonds.
That, I ponder.
Then, together, we would form something new—
something greater than the sum of our separate parts.
A symbol of perfect wholeness, maybe…
a sweet and light offering to the Whole.
Yet—
how can a rock overcome its own weight?
Read our “Aberration” issue in full
The 31 artists featured in RAWGUE. Magazine’s 5th issue stray from the expected, taking untrodden paths, contemplating imperfection, solitude in its many forms, and the ongoing process of self-acceptance. Through shifting perspectives, their works explore what it means to look at oneself from the outside, as if through broken glass.
We’re a team of writers using our craft to spotlight art in its most honest form. RAWGUE. started as a bi-monthly editorial experiment where each issue’s theme is dictated by the submitted work, thus removing editorial bias from the equation and preserving a more raw approach. We focus on all forms of poetry: written, photographed, painted, drawn, and filmed.
