Book of the Week – still lifes by Ron Scully

Before reading a single poem in still lifes, pause for a moment and consider the title. What does a still life suggest to you: arrangement, quiet, preservation, death? Ron Scully’s chapbook asks us to rethink the term. These are not static compositions but small kinetic shifts within stillness, where objects hold more motion than we expect.

Published by Yavanika Press in 2021, still lifes pairs vertically arranged poems with black-and-white photographs by Phil Openshaw. The visual design slows the eye. Words descend in narrow columns, isolating syllables and creating space between them. The pacing is deliberate; each poem feels less read than entered.

The opening piece sets the tone:

handful
of
wildflowers
captured
in
a half
carafe
in
a
photograph

The layering is immediate, flowers captured in glass, then again in a photograph. The still life becomes a study in containment. The poem’s verticality mimics the stems in the carafe, with narrowing lines guiding the gaze downward.

Elsewhere, Scully blends surreal humour with discreet observation:

goldfish plopped
out
of
the
bowl
understandable

The single-word turn “understandable” is unexpected. It introduces empathy into absurdity. The poem refuses drama; instead, it shrugs, acknowledging instinct and misplacement. The photograph that accompanies nearby poems, a fish-like object in a bowl, amplifies the strangeness without explaining it.

Music threads through the collection. In:

the
light
I
live
leaves
room
for
you
through
Brahms
this
morning

sound becomes architecture. “Light” and “live” mirror one another; “room” opens inwardly. The poem reads more like a calibration than a proclamation. Some of the strongest pieces pivot toward memory. In:

parents
photograph
in
an
oval
frame
no
way
out

the enclosure is literal and emotional. The oval frame traps the parents in permanence, but the poem’s final phrase shifts the frame onto the reader. No way out of inheritance. No way out of time.

The photographs deepen this effect. The image of old portrait cards spread on wood grain (page 20) reflects the poem’s sense of containment and echo. Later, a glass doorknob and pocket watch hang suspended (page 23), objects in mid-use yet still motionless. The pairing emphasises the book’s tension between arrest and continuation.

Midway through reading, you may notice that your breathing has slowed. The white space does its work. The vertical poems ask you not to rush, not to skim. They create pauses between words that resemble pauses between heartbeats.

Scully’s language is spare but never cold. Even in lines like:

semicolon at
my
window
with
a
broken
wing

punctuation becomes a creature, injured yet capable of flight. The ordinary briefly tilts.

still lifes reminds us that stillness is rarely static. It is charged, waiting, alert.

You can read the entire chapbook in the THF Digital Library. As you move through it, notice where your pace changes and which image lingers longest.

Do you have a full-length or chapbook-length book published in 2021 or earlier that you would like featured as a Book of the Week? Contact us for details. Haiku featured in the Book of the Week Archive are selected by the THF Digital Librarian, Vidya Premkumar and are used with permission.