At the Intersection of Light and Words. Artphoto & Poems

At the Intersection of Light and Words

Artphoto & Poems

Tatiana Dean

Acknowledgements:

Siegfried von Babenberg

© Tatiana Dean, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0069-2252-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

An Introduction to Tanya Dean’s Poetry: Or, How to Navigate the Universe with a Bruised Heart and a Stubborn Smile

To approach the poetry of Tanya Dean is to be handed a beautifully, alarmingly detailed map of the human emotional landscape, where the continents are named “Longing,” the mountain ranges are “Resilience,” and the weather is notoriously unpredictable. It’s a terrain we all know, though we might not always admit to having gotten spectacularly lost there. These verses are not mere observations from a safe shore; they are dispatches from the very eye of the storm, written in ink that seems to be one part tears, one part starlight, and just a hint of defiant caffeine.

The journey begins, as all the best and most terrifying journeys do, with a declaration of faith. “I believe in you,” she insists, twice for good measure, as if trying to convince both the reader and some doubting part of her own soul. It’s the poetic equivalent of gearing up for an expedition while muttering, “Well, here goes nothing, and possibly everything.” What follows is a grand tour through life’s less glamorous holiday destinations: the soggy lowlands of Sacrifice, the gusty cliffs of Bad Luck, and the bewildering roundabouts of Existential Dread. Her advice for this trip? “Smile and do not try to be sad.” One can almost hear the wry, unspoken addendum: “or at least, try to look like you’re enjoying the view while your soul is quietly re-evaluating all its life choices.”

Dean is a master cartographer of inner conflict. She speaks of storms scattering dreams and souls falling off their hinges – domestic imagery for cosmic chaos, which is, let’s be honest, how most crises feel. One imagines her looking for the “rescue bridges” with the focused desperation of someone searching for a Wi-Fi signal in a remote cabin. Her philosophy is strangely comforting in its practicality: “We have to walk and don’t lose the drive.” Not a triumphant “We shall overcome!” but a gritty, slightly out-of-breath “We have to keep going, because the alternative is to sit down in this metaphorical mud, and it’s starting to rain again.”

The love poems are where the humour becomes most poignantly threadbare, revealing the profound ache beneath. “Tomorrow I will try to forget you again,” she announces, a project plan doomed from the start, like vowing to reorganize your attic during a hurricane. There’s a heartbreakingly bureaucratic approach to grief: “I will building a wall to hide with my pain… Throwing the key away.” The sheer administrative workload of heartbreak! The forms to fill in, the walls to construct, the keys to misplace. Yet, in the magnificent, illogical summit of it all, she concludes: “But anyway I’m choosing – Love.” It’s the emotional equivalent of ordering a lavish dessert after a truly disastrous meal, simply because one believes in the principle of joy.

Her work acknowledges the necessary, if absurd, defenses we build. “I have to build surviving walls,” she states, then immediately undermines the project in another poem: “I’ll get to you through any wall.” It seems the architecture of the heart is constantly under renovation, never quite meeting code, always having a secret door.

What saves this exploration from being a mere catalog of woes is the persistent, cheeky presence of light. It’s not a blinding Hollywood sunrise, but more a stubborn, self-generated glow. “Raise up your heart up to the sky,” she instructs, not to ask for a miracle, but to “ask for beauty.” It’s a subtle, brilliant shift. She’s not requesting divine intervention to remove the hurdles; she’s asking for the aesthetic sense to appreciate the dramatic shape of them as we stumble over. The promise is that “your thoughts will shine and will be wise,” which is a far better outcome than most self-help books offer.

In the end, Tanya Dean’s poetry is a chronicle of graceful, messy persistence. It’s about learning to fly and run while still nursing bruises from the last fall, about hearing the “life song” that “never ends” even when you’re desperately craving a moment of silence. She reminds us that the “pure kindness” and love are, in fact, inside us all along – which is excellent news, as it means we don’t have to go far to find them, though the journey to remember that fact is epic. To read her is to have a companion who says, “Yes, it’s terribly difficult and absurd, isn’t it? Now, take my hand. Let’s see what’s over the next hill. I believe in you.” And you almost, despite all better judgment, start to believe it too.

Siegfried herzog von Babenberg

Poetry

I believe in you

I believe in youEven if sometime we don’t feel like living,Life requires sacrifice and takes luck from us,Smile and do not try to be sad, brows frowning.Life always throwing hurdles at usAnd the soul from the misery fell off its hingesAnd our spirit weakens or fallsBut there’s always a pass or rescue bridges.If rain and snow whip through our lifeAnd no one around to warm frozen handsWe have to walk and don’t lose the driveHave to be strong and don’t bend.The wind and the storm scatter our dreamsWe knowing nothing, but feeling the essenceThat nourishes soul, doesn’t let it to sleep