The Resident

A poetry and image collaboration between Matt Howard Emily Ryalls.

August–November 2025

Matt Howard, the 2024–25 Yorkshire Sculpture Park / Laureate Fund poet in residence, has written a collection of new poems inspired by the sculptures, landscape, architecture and wildlife at YSP. Since August 2024, he spent time staying there and immersed himself in the life of the Park, connecting closely to the YSP community. 

Howard is a published poet and manager of the University of Leeds Poetry Centre. He previously worked for the RSPB and his love of birds and the natural world informs much of his writing.

Created in response to Howard’s poems is a series of hand-printed silver gelatin photographs by Wakefield-based artist Emily Ryalls. With a feminist emphasis, she works with photography, performance and sculpture to shape spaces for engagement and connection. In April, Ryalls had a residency at YSP in partnership with The Art House. She explored body mapping in the landscape with a group of women, making powerful and collaborative images that use nature in unison with analogue photographic techniques.

The resulting poems and photographs took form as an A5 zine, published by YSP and available to purchase during The Resident exhibition,