Very pleased to say the Dadaist I Swallow with poem by Bristol City Poet Caleb Parkin will be screened as part of Lyrical Visions festival on the 9th of December.  This will be one of those rare occasions at the moment – a LIVE screening – because the event takes place in Titirangi, a suburb of Auckland, New Zealand. It sounds a fantastic and very special event to be part of – see their description below.
Lyrical Visions is an annual celebration of poetry film, animation and music. It’s the brainchild of film makers Martin Sercombe and Robin Kewell. Robin screens the very best of ‘art house’ cinema from Lopdell House in the bush clad Auckland suburb of Titirangi. Martin moved to Titirangi from Norwich, UK in 2014 and teaches film and animation at AUT Auckland and in community settings. The idea was to bring together Martin and Robin’s work with other local film makers, poets and students, in a format that includes some of the best international cinematic poetry. Each show combines live performances with video projections and single screen works. The fifth year’s programme will include a band of local musicians improvising live to projected films.
The events are sponsored by local businesses and SAE Institute, the school of audio, music and screen production based in Auckland.

For more information about the festival and Martin’s film work, please visit https://martinsercombe.com/lyrical-visions-2/
For more about the cinema screenings, see:
https://flickscinema.weebly.com/

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Liberated Words' www.liberatedwords.com latest article asks Who Creates the Image inspired by Selfie with Marilyn (poet Heidi Seaborn, performer Hatti Rees and filmmaker Sarah Tremlett) which I am really thrilled to say has been selected for this year’s ZEBRA, Berlin (19-22 November) and in Spanish for FOTOGENIA, Mexico City, 12–14 November – the festival selecting 'disruptive, avant-garde narratives'.   

​Sarah Tremlett, poet Heidi Seaborn and Dr Meriel Lland discuss Selfie with Marilyn, female (self)representation over the years, Hatti's exploration of personas and Sarah’s New Romantic identities. Non-binary artist Hatti Rees (who performs Marilyn rehearsing), is also currently in the exhibition Power to the Models alongside ten other outsider identities at The Stedelijk Museum, Breda where leading innovative artist, photographer and curator Jan Hoek has enabled the models to take control of their images and define themselves. Also big congratulations to Hatti on the release of her first song as XAiLA available on Spotify and other sites see www.hattirees.com. 
 
This discussion brought up many other subjects and certainly will be continuing. Just like to say how very grateful I am to the Visible Poetry Project who produced the film for their April (one film a day) National Poetry Month annual project. Here film-makers get to choose a poet and poem they would like to work with, and I happened to get very lucky! 

​Very pleased to be taking part in this stimulating conference organised by the Geological Society, with a strong team of geopoets at the helm and taking part. Whilst pre-COVID-19 the event would have been live, (with all that encompasses in relation to the theme), geological sites have found their online visual voice through poetry plus photographs, paintings, music and poetry film. Renowned poet John Hegley is headlining the day, with unmissable talks and readings from: Yvonne Reddick, Sarah Acton, Norrie Bissell, Nia Davies, Alyson Hallett, Ken Cockburn and more, including the Hugh Miller Writing Competition poetry winners Jack Cooper (18–25) and Claire Rinterknecht (under 18). I will be reciting the poem and showing the poetry film ‘Firewash’, the second episode from Tree my family history geopoetry and poetry film project.

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To sign up to watch the conference please go to: https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/geopoetry20 where they note:
 
‘This event is to follow up the Geological Society's first Geopoetry Day (held in 2011), and was due to take place at the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh. While due to the coronavirus situation it will now take place online, we are delighted to present a programme that brings together voices from around the world while remaining firmly rooted in Scotland.
 
Rocks have long inspired poets (refer to Burns' "O my Luve's like a red, red rose"poem 2794): "Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun".
 
To the present day poets are similarly inspired. Michael McKimm's Fossil Sunshine (2013) and "MAP, Poems after William Smith's Geological Map of 1815" (2015) showed how geological subject matter from Geopoetry 2011 could inspire poets: "...the poems here make Smith's map anew in moving and surprising ways". The Jurassic Coast Poems (2017) by Sarah Acton, the Jurassic resident poet, showed continued inspiration: "We hear the red rock Speak in ripples".
 
This event, to be held on National Poetry Day (1 October 2020), is hosted by the Geological Society (in conjunction with the Central Scotland Group), the Scottish Poetry Library and the Edinburgh Geological Society and will bring together poets and geoscientists to further encourage the rocks to speak.
 
Thanks to the sponsorship of the Scottish Energy Forum, registration for this event is free.’
 
 

Very pleased to reveal latest poetry film with poem by Caleb Parkin.   Really enjoyed editing and selecting footage whilst battling flies this summer!

Description from Vimeo:
Dadaist bike ride, swallowing flies and being part of the world’s ecosystem.

Poet: Caleb Parkin

Director, editor and selection of footage (2019) and music: Sarah Tremlett

Music: ‘Isaac the Syrian’ courtesy The Anchorites

Footage: ‘How the Fires of our Body are Fed’ Maurice Ricker, 1926 – Prelinger Archives; Yevgen Rychko, Erstudio5 – pond5.com; Miguel A. Padrinan – Pexels.com; Oleh Slepchenko – istockphoto.com. All under Creative Commons licence.

I first encountered i swallow when Caleb sent it to me to make a poetry film. That was in July 2019. Working on other things, time elapsed, but in November 2019 I found the perfect footage for the film – ‘How the Fires of our Body are Fed’. I was finishing a large reference work on poetry film The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books) and so only finished the film in July 2020. But then the film came together pretty quickly! I love Caleb’s visceral, visually evocative language that concerns itself with deep issues - crises within society and our ecosystem. I also echo the idea of turning the spotlight on insects and other forms of what have been termed ‘lesser life’ beyond the human. I was also very lucky to find the unique sound of the ‘postmodern’ band The Anchorites and will definitely work with them again.

​Join Canadian Mary McDonald, Program Delivery Lead for Pinnguaq (a not-for-profit organization based in Lindsay, Ontario), for the premiere of her mammoth, geo-located sound project, Times in Sound, Letters of War. Drawing from the Canadian Letters and Images project of Vancouver Island University, Mary has composed and mapped letters written to and from WWI soldiers and their families who were located in Southwestern Ontario; (within 150 km radius of her home in London, Ontario). Uncovering poignant and historically revealing statements, or often heart-rending final words, Mary explores the power of sound and place with this mapped and geo-located sound work, where fragments from the letters serve as both lyric and note. 
 
This is part of the Maskwacis Cultural College Microlearning Series and is open to the public.Registration link: https://forms.gle/cg16M8BxZfsT2hcf6
 

​All the films are online now at The Visible Poetry Project www.visiblepoetryproject.com @VisiblePoetryProject.  See You can view a poem a day for April – National Poetry Month USA – from the New York-based organisation. I have really enjoyed the variety, especially during lockdown, and it is good to look back over previous years, too. If you are a selected filmmaker you can pick one of their chosen poems to develop. My allotted day is April 25th and I was lucky to be able to choose evocative, bittersweet poem ‘Selfie with Marilyn’ by US poet Heidi Seaborn www.heidiseabornpoet.com @HeidiSeaborn. Her writing encapsulates Marilyn’s imaginary thoughts / loss of innocence perfectly to me. Equally, I feel Hatti Rees www.hattirees.com @Hatti_Rees completely inhabits the roles of Marilyn and Norma Jeane. See The Visible Poetry Project on Vimeo  https://vimeo.com/411836281 Many thanks VPP, Heidi and Hatti (and Georgi for the stills) for the fantastic opportunity.  🙂