Fuel For The Fire
Tish Murtha. Photographer 1956 – 2013
She never ran away
or tried to escape that unholy beginning
She wasn’t one to cry when she was beaten
Tish was always coming home
home with its broken bricks and scrap fires
always the smell of something burning
For her, love existed
through the black bright eye of a camera
sharpened by the cold, by winter leanings
boys standing tall as demi-gods
on broken plinths of derelict buildings
lying like tiger cubs on the back of busted sofas
Leaping from open windows
onto piled-up mattresses
wild acrobats of the open-air
Young people pooling their resources,
love leaning hip to hip. A game of cards, a kiss.
An upturned chair, somewhere to sit at the tip
She didn’t say poverty was beautiful,
knew too well the cost of human bodies used for scrap
stacked like broom shanks against the Job Centre wall
And Tish, snapping like a demon
documents the wasteland and the wanting,
fighting that Great Fire with her fire, all the way home.
Debs Buchan is from Newcastle Upon Tyne. She writes a bit, paints a bit and watches too much television.