When it feels hot, that rage against me by Rebecca Goss

Dutch filmmaker Helmie Stil‘s latest poetry film uses a text by the British poet Rebecca Goss.

This poetry film is about the transition from being a girl to a woman from the perspective of a mother who wants to protect her daughter but at the same time wanting to let her go.

Rebecca Goss’ poem ‘When it feels hot, that rage against me’ won the Sylvia Plath Prize in April 2022. For the Sylvia Plath Literary Festival in October 2022 it has been made into a poetry film by Helmie Stil from poetrycinema and The Poetry Society.

I love poetry films that feel like responses to the particularity of the places where they were shot. I know that wasn’t the case here, that the text preceded the film and was written independently of it, but the fact that it feels as if it could’ve been written ekphrastically is testament to the rightness of Stil’s imagery.

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