Poetry
Painting with words
Toby writes poetry alongside his painting; since leaving his National Trust work he has described what he does simply as painting and writing. The two feed each other: a painting sparks a poem, or a poem a painting.
Toby read German and Philosophy at Oxford. By 2013 he had written some seven hundred poems and spoke of publishing a selection. The subjects overlap with his pictures almost exactly: livestock and wild animals, weathered buildings, the ironies of ownership and loss, and the odd sharp look at the human condition through a creature that has no idea it is being looked at.
His poems have been recognised twice by the East End Arts Council in Riverhead, New York, where entries are judged anonymously by a committee of published poets. Warhorse, an elegy for an old cavalry horse put out to pasture, took Best in Show for poetry in the 2012 exhibition La Morte. The following year Your Case won joint first place in the poetry contest attached to the exhibition Diversity, and his poems were read aloud at the East End Arts Winners’ Show that autumn.
In April 2017 he was one of ten poets invited to read new work at the Parrish Art Museum’s Poetry Night, part of the People’s State of the Union project, with a poem on the qualities of America he felt were under threat.
“Poetry is like painting with words, and it has a strong visual element for me.”
The East Hampton Star, April 2017
“The two co-exist symbiotically — in some cases a painting sparks a poem or vice versa. In its own way, poetry has form, colour and texture too. And, as with figurative art, you need to know the rules in order to break them.”
Dan’s Papers, January 2015
“Painting is a bit like poetry, using images in words with awareness of their associations.”
Dan’s Papers, April 2013
Poems
Titles of poems that have been read in public or recognised in competition.
- WarhorseBest in Show for poetry, La Morte, East End Arts Council, 2012
- Your CaseJoint first place, Diversity poetry contest, East End Arts Council, 2013
- CloverShown at the East End Arts Winners’ Show, 2014
Toby’s poems are unpublished in book form and are his copyright; only brief lines that have appeared in public are quoted here. A selection may be made available on request.