In her first project as Makar (Scotland’s national poet), Kathleen Jamie invited Scots to submit lines for a trio of crowd-sourced film-poems with a clear rewilding theme, to coincide with the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. As filmmaker Alastair Cook explains on the project’s page at Filmpoem:
The Life Breath Songs (Òrain Beò-analach) is a three film cycle from the #PeoplesPoem project supported by the Scottish Government and driven by the Makar, Kathleen Jamie –
The Life Breath Song
The Shivering River
Are We Listening?Commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library from Alastair Cook, the triptych is called “The Life Breath Songs – toward a nature poem, written by the people of Scotland”, and is curated and arranged by Scotland’s Makar Kathleen Jamie and read by Eilidh Cormack. The cycle was directed and edited by Alastair with sound by Luca Nasciuti and cinematography by James William Norton.
For the texts of the poems, go to the Scottish Poetry Library. From the same source, here’s a good bio of Kathleen Jamie.
Recusio Redacted is a film by Helen Dewbery, from a poem by Jacqueline Saphra. The poem appears in the collection Dad, Remember You Are Dead, published by Nine Arches Press.
Helen will be familiar to followers of Moving Poems from her earlier films previously shared here. Aside from being a marvelous film-maker, she is co-editor with Chaucer Cameron of the online journal Poetry Film Live.
Jacqueline Saphra is a playwright as well as a poet. Her writing has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, among other honours. She lives in London and teaches at The Poetry School.
An author-made poetry film by Zoe Paterson Macinnes,
a visual artist and filmmaker from the Isle of Lewis. Zoe’s work is a result of her island heritage. She combines personal observations of land and sea with voice, memory and music from the islands to explore themes of identity and belonging. Her documentary short, Cianalas, which investigates the identity of young musicians in Lewis, was awarded Best Documentary Short by Desert Rock Film and Music Festival, and Best Student Film by Culture and Diversity Film Festival.
The music is by Lauren MacColl—the traditional fiddle tune “MacGregor of Roro’s Lament“—setting the mood for a bittersweet, meditative film which I liked well enough when I first watched it two months ago, but found incredibly moving the second time through. I suppose it helps than I can connect to it in two ways, from having visited other islands in the Hebrides, and from my own deep connection to the place where I grew up (including knowing exactly where I’ll be buried, as the poem says).
Video is such a great medium for poems of place! And despite being a professional filmmaker, Macinnes kept things simple with text on screen and slow-moving shots that aren’t redundant with the text and give the viewer’s mind permission to roam—paradoxically, a state more amenable to active engagement. It moves at a walker’s pace. I like that.
This beautiful video of Alice Oswald‘s Mist is by Aodhagán O’Flaherty, a film-maker previously unknown to me. The poet is very well known, especially in UK, but the film is one of those random discoveries that sometimes happens when wandering the web.
I found in my searches that Aodhagán O’Flaherty is Irish-born, now Berlin-based. I found no other videos from him, and so it seems all the more surprising that this one has such an assured and affecting way with images, editing, rhythm, sound and narration. Of course, it helps as well that the poem is so wonderful. It can be read on the page here.
Because Goddess is Never Enough draws its inspiration from the life of Austrian-born dancer, choreographer, actor and painter, Tilly Losch (1903-1975). The film is a collaboration between film-maker Jane Glennie and writer/performer Rosie Garland, both award-winning artists in the UK. The subject is the representation of women artists in history, especially the ways their stories have been footnoted in relation to famous men. One of the film’s lines about Tilly’s place in history: “blink and you’ll miss her”.
From the web page for the film:
Tilly Losch was an Austrian dancer who worked with prominent, and cutting-edge, choreographers and artists in the UK and the US, from the West End to Hollywood. She was also a choreographer in her own right, who later turned to painting.
Through moving images and poetry Glennie and Garland investigate the elusive and fragmentary nature of Tilly’s life, evoking the spirit of the 1920s–40s when she was at the peak of her fame.
The film is about self-worth, the authentic self, and the credibility of creative women – Losch was someone who was at times exploited yet determined to maintain a path of her own making despite the obstacles that were very much present in her era… highlighting how far women have come in 90 years, and yet how far they still have to go to get recognition and true independence.
Jane Glennie’s film-making most often involves rapid animation of still images, creating a highly dynamic sense of cinematic motion. At ten minutes duration, this is her most ambitious film to date, involving thousands of her own photographs, meticulously layered with contrasting rhythms that underscore voice and text.
Rosie Garland’s expressive narration of her own poem is highly effective. Her voice alternates with that of Alison Glennie, equally as effective in the first-person sections that evoke Tilly speaking for herself. The overall soundtrack is mainly just the two voices accompanied by textural sound effects. This minimal approach proves an excellent stylistic choice.
All the different elements of the film combine organically and assuredly, suggesting a great collaboration between the artists involved. Because Goddess is Never Enough is a unique evocation of one woman’s creative life and by extension the lives of so many creative women throughout time.
Lewis Carroll‘s famous nonsense poem Jabberwocky has been adapted to the screen many times. This version from 2020 by Dutch artist Sjaak Rood was produced for TED-Ed as part of a series of collaborations between educators and film animators. Music is by Mark Nieuwenhuis with narration by Jack Cutmore-Scott. It was a 2021 finalist in the Ó Bhéal Poetry Film Competition in Ireland.
Moving Poems has previously shared two other film versions of Jabberwocky as well as an adaptation of Carroll’s The Mad Gardener’s Song.
Filmmaker Karen Dennison writes in a blog post,
As part of Abegail Morley’s series of posts on The Poetry Shed on the theme of Unlocking Creativity, I compiled a film as a prompt with a call out to poets to respond. Jill Munro wrote a fantastic poem in response and here is the resulting film poem.
Click through for the text of the poem and a short biog of Munro.
A filmpoem by Karen Dennison, who also supplied the voiceover. The text was written by Jemma Borg, Annie Butler, Kerry Darbishire, Catherine Fletcher, Bashabi Fraser, Carl Griffin, Philip Gross, Chrys Salt, and Alina Stefanescu. Here’s the YouTube description:
Arrival at Elsewhere is a book length long poem response to the pandemic, curated by one poet, Carl Griffin, but written by 97. This is an extract from the book. It’s published by Against the Grain poetry press and available to buy at https://againstthegrainpoetrypress.wordpress.com/arrival-at-elsewhere/
From the description at that link:
Poets from across the world speak in one voice in response to 2020’s life-changing pandemic. Not a definitive voice, nor an authoritative one. But a contrasting, contradicting, confused voice, set both in the UK and everywhere else, represented by one narrator who, just like the rest of us, is made up of a hundred different people. A narrator cohesive only in his/her/their contemplation of Elsewhere.