
[KELP JOURNAL] Let’s dive right in! I chose the following photographs from the many you submitted due to their sense of place. Was that an intentional theme you were trying to capture?
[KELLY DUMAR] Thank you for including my photos of various beaches. Yes, a sense of place is actually always my theme. When I am on a trip to an unfamiliar place, I don’t feel as if I arrive until I have taken some images of the natural beauty of the particular weather, the particular plants, the particular sky, the specific spot of earth. Taking an image is a means of settling into my own sense of place––where, as the poet Robert Creeley says, “the heart finds rest,” but also, “where one feels an intimate association with the ground underfoot.” In these photos you selected, the ground under foot (or water!) includes Miami, Martha’s Vineyard and Longboat Key, Florida.

[KJ] Some of the photos make great use of either color with vibrant blues and greens or black and white tones. Can you talk about what goes through the choice to use one vs. the other?
[KD] All the images were shot originally in color. Of course, the beach shack is taken at dusk––dusk is all about a moody, wistful, hungry shade of purple/blue that hits us right in our solar plexus. But, for the vibrancy of the scenes of the children playing in a wave on Longboat Key, or the sign “Path to Far,” on Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark, playfulness and zest are communicated through quintessential beach colors. Turquoise water is water you cannot resist playing in. Blue sky and green sea grass are colors of summer in New England by the sea. The Path to far is a sign that there is nowhere “near” one needs to be; no obligations. But, to communicate a sense of eternality, I chose black and white for the mailbox of the dune. As if one could be a resident of a sand dune, forever and forever and actually never have mail or bills or obligations delivered! Again, for the stick structure, I chose black and white to communicate a sense of timelessness associated with improvising a shelter after a shipwreck.

[KJ] You are a very accomplished poet with several notable publications, as well as a playwright. For all my multi-talented, multifaceted creators such as yourself I always like to ask whether the projects or forms choose them or do you choose the form?
[KD] I take images every day to feed my spirit and capture beauty, regardless of what I am writing. I let the photos choose me by being aware when something in my environment seems to be noticing me. I stop and pay attention. For the past decade, even though I teach playwrighting, I have been focusing entirely on poetry. Until last summer when I wrote my first full length play, spontaneously, the first in many years, at the same time that I am working on a poetry manuscript. I realize now that I am working on the same theme in the play as in the poems. The play is storytelling and plot as well as theme, character and dialogue, of course. The poems are memory, image, emotion compressed and crafted into lyrical elements that generally do not involve plot in any recognizable way, or character or dialogue. But the poems are more internal and involve setting, place, and sensory details.

[KJ] You also produce “Open Mic” for the Journal of Expressive Writing and I always wonder if our creative outlets feed into one another. Do you think that your other creative outlets inspire or influence your photograph?
[KD] I think if I could draw, paint, weave, or sculpt I would not have been drawn to photography. Taking images is pure wish fulfillment––the need I have to feel that I can be a creator of beauty. A longing I’ve had all my life, and for the most part, felt inadequate to attain. Writing, developing craft over many years, has encouraged me, helped me see that I can, in fact, create things of beauty. Perhaps it has been that discovery, as a writer, that showed me I could capture beauty with a camera and create an image of beauty. I love your questions and what I’ve learned by exploring them. Thank you!

Kelly DuMar is a poet, playwright and workshop facilitator from Boston. She’s author of four poetry collections, including jinx and heavenly calling, published by Lily Poetry Review Books in March 2023. Her poems are published in Bellevue Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Thrush and more. Her images have been featured on the cover of Josephine Quarterly, About Place, Synkroniciti, Feral, Cool Beans Lit, Young Ravens Literary Review, Etymology, Confetti, and Atlantic Northeast. Kelly produces the Featured Open Mic for the Journal of Expressive Writing. Her abstract photos celebrate the beauty and organic complexity of nature from the habitat of her home on the Charles River and her travels beyond.
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