About/Links

Sarah Tremlett, prizewinning poetry filmmaker, poet and theorist, co-founded Liberated Words CIC Poetry Film Events with the spoken word poet and novelist Lucy English. Liberated Words began life as a one-day curated screening as part of MIX – Merging Intermedia Conference 2012 at Bath Spa University, which Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English also founded and co-organised (and Sarah was on the steering panel for Mix II in 2013). As a joint team they ran festivals together until 2016 when other projects took precedence. Sarah continues Liberated Words online, as Editor of this website.

VERY BRIEFLY! Poetry films come in all shapes and sizes but usually include a combination of the spoken (VoiceOver) and/or written word as text on screen, moving images and soundscape. To find out more about the genre, its history and different forms please read: The Poetics of Poetry Film, Intellect Books, 2021.

Sarah Tremlett, Editor of Liberated Words, MPhil, FRSA, is a British prizewinning poetry filmmaker, and the author and editor of the 400-page ‘groundbreaking industry bible’ The Poetics of Poetry Film (Intellect Books, 2021) which is now in over 650 academic libraries worldwide. She has a degree in Fine Art and an MA in Creative Writing. She has exhibited her paintings in the UK and USA and had scripts shortlisted for play competitions in the USA, with one of her scripts produced on stage and optioned for film. She has been invited to give talks on poetry film around the world and has been screening her videos since 2001.
Described as a ‘visual philosopher’ by Karina Karaeva, (Video Curator, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow) for her work experimenting with the aesthetics of text in film and relational subjectivity (matternal philosophy, Springer, 2009), she has been known since 2005 for researching and defining the term ‘contemplative’ poetry films, developed in her thesis on rhythm and poetry film (UAL, 2014). As an author-filmmaker her thinking centres on poetry film as a hybrid form of philosophy of language practice. She has also been innovative in implementing poetry film projects e.g. between schools in English, Media and Dance; with autistic teenagers and also combining creative writing with teaching English. She is passionate about inclusional philosophy, redressing balance in social and environmental issues and bringing poetry film to a wider audience.

Sarah is unusual in the field, in that her work has evolved from experimental moving visual or concrete videopoems to lyric and subjective, performative narrative poetry films, and her work is author-based. She is also unusual in that she has worked both sides of the lens as an artist and erstwhile fashion model (see her poetic memoir Horse-Woman (Basic Bruegel Editions, 2025) and feels that theory is best expounded through practice. She has been instrumental in identifying categories such as ekphrastic poetry film, but most particularly family history poetry films. Her long-term, family history project TREE (taking over 25 years) includes archival research, onsite visits, prose, poetry and poetry films. She launched Poem Film Editions with poetry filmmaker Csilla Toldy in 2023 to promote word/image poetry books with links to poetry films.

t / i: sarahftremlett

https://www.sarahtremlett.com

https://www.facebook.com/sarahftremlett

t / i: liberatedwords

https://www.liberatedwords.com

https://www.facebook.com/LiberatedWords

View Sarah’s Full CV here

Sarah Tremlett Short BIO 2025

Sarah Tremlett full CV recent 2021

FOR LIBERATED WORDS POETRY FILM FESTIVALS

Dr Lucy English is a Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, teaching on the undergraduate and Master’s Creative Writing courses. Her specialisms are performance/spoken word poetry, public speaking and writing for digital platforms.
Lucy is one of the organisers of MIX, the Bath Spa conferences in digital writing and is currently studying for a PhD in Digital Writing, creating a digital poetry film project, The Book of Hours.
Lucy has three novels published by Fourth Estate: Selfish People (1998), Children of Light (1999); and Our Dancing Days (2000) and in 2006 was artistic director of Apples and Snakes Poetry Tour, Exposed.
In 2007, Lucy was a finalist in the first BBC Radio 4 Poetry Slam. In 2010-11 she toured the UK with the acclaimed Arts Council sponsored multi-media poetry show, Flash, and in 2014-2015 toured with Count Me In. She continues to perform and produce spoken word poetry.
Lucy has toured Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Taiwan with the British Council, running workshops and performances and has also run workshops for Arvon.
As an RLF consultant fellow, Lucy runs training workshops in UK universities.