From the introduction:
"It was whilst studying photography in America that I became interested in uniting image and text. I would write about photographs I had taken, and add other information, related and tangential. This idea developed when I began to ask the subjects of my photographs to write a statement or comment about themselves, their lives, or anything that came to mind. A natural progression, aided by my interest in poetry and portraiture, led to Picture: Welsh Poets, a serious attempt to combine image and text. The poets and writers in this book were asked to choose or produce a piece of their own work and write it wherever they wished on the photograph, in their own hand. Most of the contributors are poets but also included are two novelists, Alun Richards and Ron Berry, playwright Dick Edwards and historian Dai Smith. My intention was not to illustrate the text but simply to bring text and image together in a single visual statement. The photographs in Picture: Welsh Poets are the result of this idea."

Stuart Smith was born in Epsom in 1965. He was educated at Farnborough Sixth Form College and at Gwent College where he completed a Degree in Graphic Design. He now lives and photographs in London.