OBheal, run by leading Irish poets and poetry filmmakers Paul Casey and Colm Scully will be hosting their annual poetry film festival on Sunday 2nd November. I am very proud and pleased to say Nocturne for a Lighterman is one of the 30 finalists. It was a dark neo-symbolist ekphrastic experiment with the painting Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Old Battersea Bridge by James McNeill Whistler.  I am particularly happy because the soundscape is by Marc Neys, whom I have admired for so many years.  Finally, the right project for him came along. This year the OBheal is coming from Cork Arts Theatre, Carrolls Quay, Cork – a great venue. If you get the chance, please do go, where poetry really inhabits every part of this memorable experience and the city itself. And on Thursday Colm will be hosting a workshop on Zoom. Don't miss it!!!

​ 
Looking forward to reading from Horse-Woman (my poetic prose memoir with paintings, about fashion modelling and being an artist and writer, living in a bohemian bedsit in London)! Come along 

‘Poetry Film Club returns to Bristol on 16th September. @sarahtremlett will be reading from her latest publication ’Horse-Woman’, and screening ‘Flight’, the poetry film from the prologue to the book. Plus Rebecca Rezakhani-Hilton and @chaucercameron 
It‘ll be a great evening with lots of discussion in a relaxed venue.’  –

​NOTE: Women and Bodies a linking theme 😊
​
Courtesy of the wonderful Satellite of Love https://solpoetry.org.uk/satellite-of-love-hosts-poetry-film-club-4

TICKETS
https://www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/john-sebastian-lightship/tue-16-sep-satellite-of-love-host-poetry-film-club-136816#e136816
​
See images from the book below and also images from modelling

Can't quite believe that Villanelle has been shortlisted for an award at the Women over Fifty Film Festival. The brainchild of BBC scriptwriter, playwright and short filmmaker Nuala Sullivan, this is not only a creative film festival addressing gender and ageism, but also should be applauded for their wider activities. Moving Pictures is one of WOFFF's projects a 'mini-festival reaching elder care homes, community centres and charities across London and the wider UK through a programme of short films and creative activities'. 

Thirty submissions have been shortlisted and I am really looking forward to going to Lewes for September 13th to watch them all. Villanelle is both a short film that developed over time, with possibilities that came my way, and my two amazingly talented daughters; and also, at the time it was made, a disgust at Harvey Weinstein and a solidarity with the MeToo movement that had begun a few years before.

​Now, of course, as I write, we are faced with Trump, Epstein, and also John Casablancas who ran Elite Model Agency ... I was a model a long time ago, at the end of the 1970s (see my memoir Horse-Woman) and I had heard stories even then about Casablancas. I also knew that girls would be invited to places such as Japan and then find they had become offered as escorts and financially couldn't return home. At my agency I turned down such an offer from a Japanese agency (seeing what could potentially happen). I would like to now dedicate this film to Sacramento-born Virginia Giuffre who unfortunately died in April (apparently by suicide, but of course this is being questioned) and whose untiring work in addressing sex trafficking and the 'billionaire playboy club' should be commemorated – ideally in a more permanent form. 

Please see the shortlist below for all the finalists.
 wofff.co.uk/2025/08/judges-shortlist-2025/  
​

Many thanks to Dr Helen Johnson for this lovely opportunity to present Horse-Woman at CAW, at Brighton University, especially alongside Sandra, whose work sounds fascinating and extremely valuable. Anyone interested in this area between the arts, psychology and wellbeing please jump in; all voices welcome  :))))

Thrilled that prolific artist, performer, poet and filmmaker Lee Campbell has chosen Nocturne for a Lighterman to be part of his fast-expanding project The River Has no Colour (also the title of Jessica Taggart Rose’s fascinating new poetry publication). Combining riverine spoken word with film, exploring the river from ‘a variety of viewpoints’ it will be in Gravesend on Thursday 14 August, and many other moorings! With Jessica Taggart Rose, Benjamin Goode, Kristijan Radakovic, Anthony Hart, Colin B Osborn, and Fiona Spirals. 
 
Insta: @theriverhasnocolour @powplayonwords @hypermediaevents ​

Very honoured that the sound design for Nocturne for a Lighterman (extended) has won best sound design for Bracciano Film and Arts Festival, July, 2025, Italy. I gave a broad outline to the leading soundscape artist Marc Neys well known for his moody, abstract, intricately layered works with repetitive patterns, and whom I felt was right for the subject. The film features a painting by James McNeill Whistler and its relationship to a lighterman depicted – potentially one of my ancestors. I wanted to have something similar in tone to Whistler's friend Debussy, and his circular, minimal motifs, and Marc came up with just that. A really powerful and atmospheric piece resulted. If you listen closely, where the lighterman's mournful whistle is mentioned, you can hear a similar sound drifting into the night just after; and where there are pauses to reflect on the darker central subject you are really taken by the changing tide of sound. THANK YOU to Bracciano and Marc Neys!