MY ISLAND by Janavi Held

My first love was black and white photography…

Perhaps I’m something of a minimalist, so what to do when film is all but gone, and the digital world has, seemingly, endless options?  I remember cutting class in high school to spend time in the darkroom; it was a magical place where pieces of the world I’d collected, or captured with the lens of my camera would take on a new life, altered by filters, paper choices, long or short exposures, long or short baths in the chemicals that would induce the images to appear on paper.

So, to me photography is collecting bits of beauty or ugliness, faces or places, the animate, and the inanimate, to bring them home, and share them with who ever is watching. Today I‘ve found a way to alter, and play with my digital photos, giving in, just a little, to the numerous possibilities.  After all, the chemicals in the darkroom smelled pretty toxic.

Most of the photographs in this video where taken on the beautiful Garden Island of Kauai, where my mother lived for many years.  I loved wandering the island with my camera and notebook. I explored places on Kauai that felt like arriving at the end of the earth, so primal, so alive with all manner of living beings; it inspired so much writing. This poem, in short, describes my experience there. I felt honored to spend so much time walking over, swimming through, and exploring the intimate recesses of that exotic, poetic piece of God’s creation.

Kauai by the author,  Janavi Held

My Island

by Janavi Held

Silk water embraces

toes and ankles

knees and thighs

pulling my body

all directions

lost in endless motion

turned backwards

forgetting longings

left them

on the shore.

Strands of twilight linger over my island

I pull those last bits of sunlight

through the strands of my bleached hair

as I wrap my hands inside the curves of waves
tossing my thoughts to the shore.

(Click play to view Janavi's photographs of Kauai) 

Janavi Held is the author of Letters to my Oldest Friend: A Book of Poetry and Photography. She has also contributed poems to two poetry anthologies, Bhakti Blossoms: A Collection of Contemporary Vaishnavi Poetry and GODDESS: When She Rules: Expressions by Contemporary Women. Two of her poems were shortlisted for the prestigious Hamilton House International Poetry Prize awarded by the University Centre Grimsby, and published in their anthology "Eternal". Janavi started writing poetry and wandering around with her father’s camera as a child. At the age of nineteen, she began practicing Bhakti yoga. She held a bachelor’s degree from Goddard College where she studied poetry, photography, and media studies. She passed away peacefully in December of 2018 after having battled a brutal illness. You may read more of her poems and view her artwork on her website here and Facebook page here. 

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