Sculpting Poetry – Portraits with Interwoven Lines and Light – Noah Saunders revisions Marc Zegans
The art of writing poetry based upon paintings or other artworks is a subject that is close to my heart, alongside the art of combining both in ekphrastic poetry films (see also the bilingual Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow publication and prize). It is also not unusual to create paintings or other forms of art based on poems, less common to create wire sculptures based upon the human figure, and, as I believe today, wholly original to create wire sculptures in human form based upon poems, illuminated and then accompanied by the poems themselves.
American artist and poet Noah James Saunders (from Athens, Georgia) has been working with wire sculptures for 35 years, and his recent first solo show at the Marietta Cobb Museum in Marietta, Georgia, (near Atlanta) is a testament to the journey he has made, and also includes his Wire and Shadow – Portraits of Poems series. He was first inspired by the medium at school, where a workshop in the subject saved his life. ‘As a queer, neurodivergent, and physically disabled child, I had grown accustomed to being told that I was abnormal, tasting the sting of humiliation, and the isolation of being perceived as “too different” to be understood. But in wire, I found a material unconventional as myself—fluid, ungoverned, and resistant to easy categorization. It was validation.’ He was also dyslexic and told he would never learn how to read. But, he says, they didn’t ask if he liked reading, and so he determined to find books himself, especially those which captured his imagination. He said in a recent presentation at OCAF (Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation) ‘My entire life with art has been based on a lie … because I really love reading’… As he began working with wire he found he needed to anchor each piece with a word – fear, love, etc. which helped keep focus. He also began to write poetry, being inspired by the words of others, which he said could at times ‘make him weep’. And this is where American poet Marc Zegans comes in.
Over to Marc
‘Several years ago, Noah attended a video talk that Brainard Carey invited me to do for his Praxis group for artists. We corresponded after that and soon became friends. I advised him on many aspects of his creative development as a sculptor and edited a great number of his poems. He was just starting out as a poet, and I helped him develop the skills he needed to fully express himself in that medium. Noah had also been working for some years on the history of a fictive city-state called Ephemera to which I contributed the characters and written account of the meaning of the major arcana in the Ephemran Tarot. This led to other projects including:a theatrical production emanating from my Typewriter Underground collection in Athens, Georgia, Noah’s home town; ‘El Poema de la Caja’ (published by Alchemy), a poem I wrote at Noah’s suggestion, and the series of sculptures he made called Portraits of Poems.’
Marc Zegans
From Noah’s Point of View
‘I began to gather images of models but felt something was missing. If this was to be a series, I realized I needed an emotional well from which to draw, not simply images. I needed a story arc to unify the series. Turns out that the emotional well I needed was in my mailbox! My friend and poet Marc Zegans had mailed me his latest book Lyon Street – a book of poems about coming of age in San Francisco in the ‘70’s and the early ‘80’s. A book in which his wiser self speaks with his younger self. It could not have been a more perfect inspiration!
As I read Marc’s verse, certain words really spoke to me – ‘as I catch and throw him to the salt’… ‘tonight, I turn and remember’… ‘I ignore him and break’… ‘a thin line of love tethering you to shore’… ‘no plans of moving on. You look out’. I was amazed at how easy it was to marry Zegans’s poetic lines to models I keep in my files. Each stanza that moved me had its own precise set of needs. Some required only a face staring out. Others wanted more, an arm, even a tattoo to round out the meaning embodied in the chosen string of words. Over the next twelve months my studio began to fill with diverse personalities. The wire portrait series, that I had dreamed up in my youth, was coming to life. After much meditation I named this series: “Wire and Shadow – Portraits of Poems.”’
Text, Wood Panel and Wire Portrait
Poems Sculpted in the Human Form
Noah also describes the project as: ‘Poems Sculpted in the Human Form’, weaving wire portraits from Marc’s outstanding memoir Lyon Street (from his life in San Francisco in the 1970s, and which I covered in depth in Liberated Words). In gallery installations these are then hung a few feet from the wall via a wall mount (often turning) and illuminated, casting shadows in front of the poems etched on white canvases. Through this process Noah is able to respond and also, at the same time, to extend the original poem in his own voice (visual voice through sculpture and sometimes actual voice in a reading). In the show at OCAF, Georgia (which incidentally led to an invitation for a solo show) one of his portraits “Tonight I Turn and Remember,” inspired by the poem ‘North Beach’ was on display, and he also read the poem for the audience. It felt like a live ekphrastic moment, as it were – revisiting and repeating the original inspiration.
Noah reading with his self portrait at OCAF. Photo Craig Gum Photography
There is also a sense of open access, of divining mood in a poem: of a meditative, delicate, gentle and tenuous gathering through the turning and shaping of hands. From one type of line to another: from mind to page, from page to a three-dimensional web in space that unwinds as a human eye. Every strand of wire intricately wrapped and shaped to convey a human state of mind or a lifelike strand of hair. We cannot ask ‘How does he do this?’ but the question remains. I was trained in drawing and painting, (also to attempt to really see) and also used to paint portraits, and the push and pull of dabs of colour on a canvas that become parts of the body are instinctive and yet learnt. Years developing a facility for noticing the correct weight, space, light and dark, texture – idiosyncratic characteristics that reveal themselves as you work. Noah is highly attuned to all these nuances. Moreover, he does not overpower the original poem but lets it breathe through the portraits. Of course, the words from Marc’s poem are literally seen through the wire when projected onto the wall beyond.
Texts and Multiple Selves, ‘Tonight’ visible top centre.
Reverse Ekphrasis
In the OCAF solo presentation he begins by asking the question, ‘How to find a narrative from decades of solitary work?’ In poetry film the isolation of working alone isn’t often discussed, perhaps because it is often a collaborative process. But in his Portraits of Poems Noah does have a collaborator of sorts. He both unwinds Marc’s lines and rewinds them as his own in a different form, whilst retaining the original source. In terms of the psychology of working with sculptures and the poetry of others Noah says he ‘bridges two universes – with words I find a sense of community and connectedness into a world so much bigger than my own’ but then he also loves finding those moments in people beyond presentation; where they reveal their true selves, which he can sculpt in wire. ‘A tiny crack that I bridge with this other universe.’ Marc calls Noah’s work a type of Reverse Ekphrasis.
In all of this we feel the humanity that is shared, that is palpable. How words and communication become a celebratory process rather than a dumb interjection or affront or criticism etc. etc. perhaps reinstating the resonant power of words for Noah, rather than remembering them as vicious blows, echoing his experiences as a child. Each of these portraits feels also in some way evidential: of how we are captured by words and are made good through words. The installation also invites us to consider a philosophical mode; a non-dualist approach. To go one stage further, Noah views this series as self-portraits. Marc’s original lines describing his youth become the lines that describe Noah. This isn’t appropriation in the strictest sense, but reverence and also repurposing to a degree, whilst in the gallery installation, a blending of art and artist performance akin to a liturgical offering up. Whilst a metaphorical reading is easy to make where shadows reflect a sense of deeper associated emotional memories, on another level I am reminded of candle-lit camera obscuras and how biblical texts (reversed and inverted) were projected onto walls.
The Audience Aids Illumination. ‘No Plans’ visible top centre. Photo by Craig Gum Photography
Noah relates: ‘Each portrait is designed to be suspended midair a few feet from the gallery wall. On the wall behind the sculpture hangs a 5′ x 5′ square wood panel painted in deep gessoed strokes. This functions as the portrait’s “page,” (also echoing the shape of Marc’s book) into which I have etched the verse that inspired the sculpture, its words visible only when the angle of the light is just right. Viewers are handed a flashlight that projects in crisp lines the shadow of the wire face onto the wood panel. The flashlight and shadow are integral to our full experience of the sculpture because the wire form is simply a prism, its shadow revealing the true spectrum of the sculpture’s emotional content.’ And, as Marc notes, what is significant creatively is that ‘the shadows of the wire forms are integral to, not a by-product of, the sculptures. This becomes vividly apparent in the image of one sculpture (also part of the Portrait series) being projected on a building wall to a height of over thirty feet.’
Photo by Craig Gum Photography
The installation as a whole suggests both a childlike joy and sense of discovery for the torch holder, and also a sort of unadulterated performance of cinematic process. Here the protagonist (Noah) is caught in a moment, then his/Marc’s script/ thoughts are illuminated by the audience who are creating the projection themselves. The protagonist’s performance is then doubled when Noah himself reads the poem, as well, sitting next to his portrait. This is me here and me there. The cinematic me if you like, absorbed in Marc’s words. Here I am, the reader who has been changed by the lines that float through and dazzle my skull.
Importantly, Noah is showing us how one mind responds to another as a moment in time, but also a moment that is performed; an installation, where he is also part of the performance. In this Reverse Ekphrasis, lines change their form, but also the poem remains, and is also spoken by the new ‘artist-author’. A transformation of sorts is taking place and it is hard not to call up the sense of an alchemical experiment. However, because the original poem remains intact the process can be undone, too.
Conversely, Marc can remain the author and speaker, as in the video As I cut and Threw Him to the Salt (https://www.bamboodartpress.com/store/marc_zegans-lyon_street.html) where Marc reads the poem as voiceover, with the wire portrait onscreen. Here there is a Reverse Ekphrasis and Ekphrasis together, a sort of intermutuality. Marc’s poem inspires the sculpture and we see this turning as he delivers the carefully crafted poem in his sonorous, musical, subtly portentous rhythms and tones. It is a dialogue of sculpture and poetry. At first, we are in a gallery location with shadow, and then the portrait turns against various colours and textures, with an atmospheric washing and tolling soundtrack. Dennis Callaci has done a great job creating mood in the editing. Equally, Noah has said that it is the mood and energy of the poem that prescribes the portrait.
Video by Craig Gum Photography
There is a difference between Noah reading alongside the installation, and the poem recited as voiceover by Marc with the sculpture onscreen. When Marc reads, rather than ekphrasis, or reverse ekphrasis, we return to the original artist, the origin, to see and hear a doubling of ekphrasis, or the poem and artwork as co-responsive event. Many years ago I made hand-painted ‘cave’ lampshades, where the thick oil paint on the parchment was incised with cave figures – humans and bison etc. When lit the shade would glow with these characters, creating a world of its own. Noah’s intricately woven illuminated self, expanding into and through Marc’s poetry (or perhaps the other way around) creates a mesmerising, constantly changing dialogue of forms: one where shadow represents psyche, and the overall, evolving bi-authored construct creates an infinite flow of mutually responsive, interwoven voices.
See ‘As I cut and Threw Him to the Salt’ and Noah’s OCAF presentation at: Lyon Street, Bamboo Dart Press https://www.bamboodartpress.com/store/marc_zegans-lyon_street.html)
Noah’s quotations from: https://www.noahjamessaunders.com/
This interview on MPR goes into a lot of detail on Wire and Shadow
https://www.wabe.org/sculptor-noah-james-saunders-casts-light-and-shadow-in-first-solo-museu m-exhibition/
Noah James Saunders – b. 1980 Atlanta Georgia
Noah James Saunders has lived and worked in Athens GA as a full time artist for the past twenty five years. His sculptures have traveled far – exhibited as a finalist in the global Luxembourg Prize arts competition, in various museums and galleries, and most recently at the New Creature Comfort Brewery in Los Angeles, where he was its first artist in residence, at the Gloria Delson Contemporary Arts gallery in Downtown Los Angeles, and recently had his first solo museum art show at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art.
Marc Zegans
http://www.marczegans.com/
Marc Zegans is a poet, spoken word artist, and creative development advisor who helps artists, writers, and creative people thrive and shine. He is the author of seven collections of poems, most recently Lyon Street (Bamboo Dart Press, 2022) and The Snow Dead (Cervena Barva Press, 2020), and several immersive theatre productions including, with D. Lowell Wilder, “Sirens, Dreams, and a Cat.” Ghost Book (Kite String Press) a fine art photo book made in collaboration with photographer Tsar Fedorsky, was published in April 2024. Marc writes a poetry review column, “On the Cutting Edge,” for Liberated Words. Films based on Marc’s poems appear regularly at festivals around the world. He lives by the coast in Northern California.
The River Has No Colour – Lee Campbell’s latest exciting project
After a short break from Liberated Words, I find myself swept up in the poetic energy and dynamic narrative (on the page and in real life) of artist, performance poet, experimental filmmaker and senior lecturer at the University of the Arts, London – Lee Campbell.
Besides a vast personal output (to be featured soon) Lee is the founder and curator of Homo Humour (see The BFI website, October 6th for the next iteration) which, screened worldwide, is ‘the first project of its kind on contemporary queer male film and moving image practices that explore humour and LGBTQ+ storytelling’. He also started POW! Play on Words, featuring performance poetry and film.
He has now launched an exciting new project The River has no Colour – which expands upon all things riverine through poetry and film. The title, as some of you may know, is taken from the richly resourced and worded debut pamphlet from British poet Jessica Taggart Rose. Lee invited me to be part of the project after seeing my film Nocturne for a Lighterman at Absurdah film festival in Sheerness recently, and I am really honoured and excited to be included.
In discussing poetry inspired by rivers, it is impossible not to reference Dart (2002)by Alice Oswald, where she documented river workers’ conversations (over three years) and created a ‘voice of the river’ in verse and prose from source to sea. You might say that Taggart Rose’s work is a type of update of this, providing an example of how to navigate (literally and metaphorically) the theme. It centers on the River Seine and its many apparitions as mythic goddess, environmental harbinger, political and historical vein (I would add since the arrival of the Normans); and is also translated into French by Claire Durand-Gasselin. This ‘doubled’ relationship also echoes the sense of endless flow and interpretation: the river (and the river of words) that we are drawn to and geographically formed by, with all its trades, accents, moods, tidal ranges etc. etc.
There are many rivers that run in our blood: in my case the Thames is deeply engrained on many fronts – for example, some of my ancestors were lightermen (bargemen) and others further up the river; whilst other rivers also feature in my past, which I will include in TREE my slow-growing poetic family history project. And in London the Thames, though a lifeline, and a source of contemplation and escape, has a dark nature, its fast-changing tidal range making it dangerous to fall into and survive.
Lee was interviewed recently by Dominic King on BBC RADIO KENT https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002ghkz and explains how rivers have always been there in his life – canoeing on the Medway, for example, and how the rivers that flow through our towns and cities form us as we form them. The ecological factor is also present: whilst Taggart Rose is one of the founding members of Poets for the Planet, Fiona Spirals raised money recently for curlews, to be found in the mudflats on the Thames estuary. Lee and Domnic also mentioned how storytelling and narratives are naturally forged and told on and alongside the water. I recently saw Lee’s film One Day, which is a beautiful abstracted almost allegorical account of a friendship, as told beside a river, where his use of the voice, and tone are deceptively powerful and moving. There is so much to write on the subject, and I am so pleased that Lee has brought the idea to fruition.
Co-presented by POW! and Hypermedia, tomorrow’s event at Gravesend literally washes up where the Thames meets the North Sea, alongside the docks, industry and ancient maritime history. Each of the evenings by TRHNC are somehow a sort of commemoration of the life (light and dark) that rivers give us, and how we give it back, in words, in verse, in film.
Exploring the richness of rivers alongside Lee will be Jessica Taggart Rose (poet living in Margate ‘concerned with humanity and nature and how they interact’); Benjamin Goode (London-based spoken word poet); Kristijan Radakovic (artist based in Berlin); Anthony Hart (Gravesend poet known for darkly comedic layered work (Poetic Flaws/Floors); Colin B Osborn (poet and musician from South London) and Fiona Spirals ( photographer, collager, poet and lover of wildlife in the Thames estuary). I won’t be able to make it but Nocturne for a Lighterman will be screened.
At the next edition of The River has no Colour (28th August) in collaboration with Insurgent Press, and at The Verbal Discharge Bookshop, Harringay, Lee will be reading my poem from the film (there won’t be a screening). I am looking forward to that as he gives a really controlled sense of drama to his voice, and it will suit the portentous, sombre, neo-symbolist mood. He is also the first person to read it!
Here is a taster to wet your appetites for tomorrow.
Fiona Spirals
@theriverhasnocolour @hypermediaevents @powplayonwords @leejjcampbell @jessicataggartrose @lmbgoode
@nouvelorganon @poeticflawsfloors @colin_b_osborn
Hypermedia, Iron Pier Brewery & Taproom, St Andrews Art Centre, Royal Pier Road, Gravesend DA12 2BD, 6pm-late. FREE ENTRY.
PLEASE NOTE: Google Maps lists Iron Pier Brewery as being on a Gravesend industrial estate. We are in the riverside location. If using Google Maps search for ‘St Andrews Art Centre’
https://filmfreeway.com/LeeCampbell
Can Poetry Change the World? asks Pam Falkenberg & Jack Cochran in Screening Texas Poets
Back in April I took part in REELpoetry online which was a full week-long festival, directed by Houston-based Fran Sanders and rich with poetry filmmakers, discussions, and important work. I have been a judge for REELpoetry for quite a few years, though not recently, and the festival has grown, through COVID too, to become a really significant date in the calendar. The live event this year happened on April 12th, at the University of St Thomas in Houston.
Outlier Moving Pictures – Pamela Falkenberg and Jack Cochran were part of both the live and online festivals, with their large-scale project – Screening Texas Poets. Pam and Jack work tirelessly in the field, as many of you will know. They are fuelled both by (often dangerous) activist filmmaking, revealing atrocities in the chemical and oil industries, and also a commitment to producing highly detailed work with both images and sound.
Screening Texas Poets involved Jack and Pam working with four important Texas poets to make incisive poetry films based on their political poems. With a beautifully constructed documentary, we are firstly treated to the poets reading their poems, then the poetry films based on the poems and finally the poets are asked two questions: ‘Can Poetry Change the World? And ‘What is Poetry?’
All four poems hit hard, confronting real-life humanitarian crises, injustice and the (everyday) fallout of the right-wing, authoritarian, totalitarian politics we are being forced to live with and witness at this time.
Wall by David Bowles
You might think that this type of filmmaking might be quite straightforward but if you take, for example, ‘Wall’ by Mexican American poet, professor and President of Texas Institute of Letters David Bowles, you can see that this isn’t exactly the case. Centred on Trump’s horrific, despotic Mexico-US border wall, this particular poem required exactly the skills that Pam and Jack possess – poetry filmmaking as investigative journalism. They literally drive out into the landscape and find those images that are striking and politically damning: living symbols of hatred and abuse of power.
Facing US, Amanda Johnston
This is echoed in ‘Facing US’ (Black Rights and police brutality) by 61st Texas Poet Laureate Amanda Johnston, and “Kel-tec PF-9” (the auctioning of the gun used to shoot Trayvon Martin) by Houston’s First Black Poet Laureate Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton. On a worldwide platform, Houston’s Fifth Poet Laureate Outspoken Bean gives voice to the unending nightmare of the current war in Ukraine (which is now in its third year, having begun in 2022).
Kel-tec PF-9, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton
The responses to Can Poetry Change the World are very revealing, often enlightening and also inspiring. A few years ago I was part of a panel presenting poetry films on Climate Change at The British Library. I was asked if I really thought it would make any difference in making the film. I said yes, that every viewing can prompt further action; and that collectively I believe we can work for change. Every voice counts today. You must believe you have a voice, and that you can take a stand. This is, after all, the poet’s calling. We have social media and film festival platforms – use them. Do not stand back and do nothing.
Outspoken Bean – Can Poetry Change the World?
This documentary confronts the major questions that are being asked about the corruption and fascism in governments today. Here, poets speak about their role and its efficacy in a political climate that is literally destroying the planet. The message is: we are not silent, nor impotent, though they try to make us so. And as petitions rise daily, and legal projects take on government despotism there is something you can do as a citizen – speak out.
I urge you to take the time to read the process notes and watch this wonderful documentary…. In the following link you will find Notes on the event and at the very end on the final image, the video of Screening Texas Poets.
CLICK HERE FOR NOTES AND THE VIDEO OF SCREENING TEXAS POETS
https://www.Outliermovingpictures.com
https://www.outspokenbean.com/
https://www.amandajohnston.com/
ON THE CUTTING EDGE: 4 – What was Said at the Reunion of Deathbed Images – Marc Zegans on Rich Ferguson
Editor SARAH TREMLETT introduces On the Cutting Edge: 4
Over twenty years ago, in 2004 or 2005, I began thinking of the screen in terms of a philosophical space. I began by looking at language itself and the letter, and how, by making it appear and disappear, something larger in terms of philosophy of language, of Being and Time, was also happening. I was also looking at materiality and feminist philosophers who were examining the essentially hierarchical, dualist, androcentric nature of philosophy since the ancient Greeks. Here we encounter such concepts as Word over Matter (or Mind over Body) Male over Female and what has now become a major disaster, the diremption of nature from culture. Feminist thinkers in the 1990s could see that philosophy needed to be connected to existence on a vital and essential level. To paraphrase myself in a really probing interview by Tereza Stehlikova of Tangible Territory[i] :
‘… see the work of Somer Brodribb Nothing Mat(t)ers: a feminist critique of postmodernism (1988), Carol Bigwood Earth Muse (1993), and Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science (1983) by Sandra Harding and Merrill B Hintikka [ii]who put the whole Western system in context. [This is not to say you have to be a feminist, but it happens that feminist women thinkers, from varying positions of inclusion and exclusion, are able to both view and relate with eloquence and clarity the issues at stake.] At the same time, women artists (second-wave feminists) were similarly dealing with real world issues, bringing art back to a serious connective marriage between place, body, subjectivity, psychology, abuse of power, etc. through text, image and voice. You can move from Nancy Spero, through Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer to Tracey Emin and some aspects of Fiona Banner etc. etc. to the opening up of othered voices from ethnically diverse and LGBTQIA+ and non-binary voices in the last ten years.’
In what I termed in my research ‘matternal’ philosophy, I was exploring a non-dualist aesthetic (word/matter) whilst also noting that this was not a gendered absolute, but a way of being, where the other is not othered. Equally, on a broader level, where one place or species is not exploited to man’s (financial) profit.
Imagine at the time, we were (and for some maybe still are) floundering in the post, postmodernist ‘Death of the Author’. I have always viewed this as a cultural indulgence, useless for those who have never had a cultural voice (women at the forefront of the queue then). In a world in crisis we need to hear real voices and see Real Values at work and connective aesthetics[iii] that can feed into and expand on them to maybe help prevent the escalating path to a final loss of existence. And here FINAL means FINAL. It is also true we have progressed in these last twenty years where many organisations, often against the odds, have made wonderful strides in ecological conservation and preservation. However, we have arrived at a place where the most influential country in the world is headed up and symbolized by a cartoon character (following on from Boris Johnson, our own cartoon character in the UK) who uses social media to make decisions and creates fear and upheaval. What is far worse is that there is a sort of tacit agreement that these men are ‘in it to make money for themselves’ whether through Brexit, oil, development or arms, or whatever scheme Trump trumps up. This is at a time when values are literally life and death for some species. Are these the people we want as leaders to a secure future? How did this happen and what can we do?
Philosophy, embedded in writing and the word itself (and outmoded historic reference) needs to change and connect with the real world in the face of potential collective ending. Philosophy needs to think of ways of existence that take into account custodianship of the planet. A rewilded garden is connective philosophy in action … I have given many presentations on the subject of philosophy, the voice and identity in poetry films (see SarahTremlett.com) and my projects always concern philosophical change, connective aesthetics and inclusion, such as the bilingual, animal rights-centred Frame to Frames book.
Poetry films largely are a wonderful species, in that they do not hide their feelings, but reveal to an audience a particular point of view, or imagination. They are not obliquely opaque and conceptual to the degree of much video art. So, in watching poetry films whether we are artists or the man in the street, we are able to be drawn into a narrative and maybe entertained or enthralled. However, for some of us, there are deeper questions that a poetry film can throw up. In my family history project TREE, where for over 25 years I have been discovering my ancestry, I continually mull over my inner connection to, and similarity with voices and attitudes embedded in my DNA. So, for this reason, as well as all of the above, I am particularly pleased to introduce the latest essay from Marc Zegans.
In On the Cutting Edge: 4 this month Marc examines one particular poetry film – What was Said at the Reunion of Deathbed Wishes
by American spoken word poet Rich Ferguson, directed by Mark Wilkinson (both of whom have been judges for the earlier Liberated Words festivals in the past). In reading this essay (entitled What was Said at the Reunion of Deathbed Images) I am particularly struck as to how the film has expanded in my mind, in terms of what perhaps might seem really obvious – the essential nature of existence, of life and death. Without asking too much of the reader we are now, for the first time in history, requested on a daily basis to think about the finality of existence. The film then seems to generate highly relevant questions: what happens at the point of departing … where do we and our voices go, etc. etc. Whether Rich intended this or not, the concept of our ‘last wishes or thoughts’ has provided Marc with an opening into philosophical conjecture that is seamlessly married into the construction of this masterful poetry film.
Marc begins by drawing in Enzo Minarelli’s ‘polypoetry’ manifesto[iv], and the role of polypoiesis in the film: ‘Though Enzo Minarelli’s foundational manifesto restricted polypoetry to live shows employing theatrical elements including dance, music, imagery, and technical intervention, the primacy polypoetry accords to sound and its notion that a “polypoet” inserts oneself as “critic, translator, curator, and journalist, into a lively network of artists and promoters,” jibe well with Ferguson’s approach to his craft.’
We are taken on a journey where aspects of the film and its place in relation to the role of the protagonist unfolds, alongside how we might think of images – whether shared or not, and the (I can only say ‘spiritual’) meaning of transmission and reunion; ‘the litany of deathbed wishes unfolds as a fantasia of desires.’
After all, as Marc says, here we are dealing with the big issues and they are being transmitted and arriving through analysis as philosophy – what is a wish? What is a deathbed image? Who is involved? Is there a reunion? How does Rich navigate the role of protagonist etc. I wonder if Rich himself has considered this? Here we are thinking about what is really being said through poetry and film. Whilst we see feature films every day that display death and killing, there is something very powerful about a film that sensitively asks us to face mortality at a very direct and confronting level.
Please watch the poetry film before (and then again after) you read this thought-provoking essay, and let us know your thoughts. The comments box is open as always and we appreciate valuable contributions to continue the discussion …
CLICK HERE – ON THE CUTTING EDGE: 4
[i] ‘The Poetics of Poetry Film’ interview by Dr Tereza Stehlikova
Tangible Territory Journal, ISSUE 4 September 2022
[ii] Somer Brodribb Nothing Mat(t)ers: a feminist critique of postmodernism, USA: New York University Press, 1988.
Carol Bigwood Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature and Art, USA: Temple University Press, 1993.
Sandra Harding & Merrill B. Hintikka (eds) Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Netherlands: Springer Dordrecht, 1983.
[iii] Gablik, S., (1992), ‘Connective Aesthetics, American Art, Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring 1992, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/424147
[iv]Polypoetry 30 Years 1987-2017, Enzo Minarelli, Frederico Fernandez, eds., p.9, Eduel International, 2018.
Sarah Tremlett reading and screening film at John Sebastian Lightship, Bristol 20 May
Excited to be reading from my poetic memoir Horse-Woman (with screening of FLIGHT the poetry film from the prologue to the book) at John Sebastian Lightship, Bristol, for Poetry Film Club on May 20th. It is an ‘otherkin’ poetic memoir with reflections on being a fashion model and writing and painting in a bedsit in London as the 1980s were about to begin.
It is published by Canadian publishers Basic Bruegel Editions (Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas) who I featured in a previous post and so this is the first UK outing for the book. A lovely location…
For Tickets:
https://www.headfirstbristol.co.uk/whats-on/the-john-sebastian-lightship/tue-20-may-bristol-poetry-film-club-129550#e129550
Hope to see you there!
LeBlanc – War and Place, Dugas – Vivres, Tremlett – Horse-Woman: Basic Bruegel Editions launch at Frye Festival
I am very pleased and proud to announce that my poetic memoir Horse-Woman will be launched at Frye Festival, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada on Thursday 24th April. It is part of the exciting new Chapbook publication series by Basic Bruegel Editions – the brainchild of leading Canadian poets and video poets Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel H. Dugas. They tell me this is Atlantic Canada’s biggest literary happening and takes place over ten days of events. https://events.frye.ca/sites/frye
‘Horse-Woman is a poetic memoir about working as a fashion model, whilst trying to write and paint, in bohemian late-1970s London bedsit land. As a socially and emotionally isolated child of elderly parents, Sarah Tremlett was given a young horse to look after, which ultimately was sold against her wishes, due to studying for A-levels. In this account of events, in order to survive, Sarah’s autistic psyche creates a mythical, ‘otherkin’ horse persona which protects and interweaves with her experiences in the fashion world.’
I am thrilled to be part of this new and highly assured series; and in such talented company, with detailed editorial nurturing, I have striven to produce something worthwhile. It has also been beneficial to me to be able to revisit this ‘hidden’ part of my life, where two worlds collide and merge, and also reflect on paintings from the time, which has proved to be a healing experience. Cowboy Riding the Horse of the World to Death – the painting on the cover of the book (and in the featured image here) depicts my feelings about what was happening in London at the time, and also paralleling my own life. In that period you could still find cheap places to live and thrive, but old, decayed, poetic buildings were on the cusp of being torn down by developers, and money became king.
At the Frye Festival Valerie will be reading from her publication War and Place and Daniel from Vivres (both part of the series) and it appears they are also one of the first events in the festival, alongside poet and multidisciplinary Canadian artist Paul Bossé and Canadian poet, actor and musician Rose Després. I will also be presenting Horse-Woman and reading an extract from it (via recorded video) see below.
War and Place embodies Valerie’s unique ability to condense large-scale propositions or events into a few words, and often as short, spare narratives that contain a deep, profundity. It is also particularly prescient as a theme in relation to contemporary Trump insanity and the provocations from Canada’s disturbing neighbour. Here, she covers ‘memories, disasters of war, and the re-viewing war movies’ (such as War and Peace and A Time to Love and a Time to Die. As with Nanook of the North you get a particular view from the eye of a girl raised in Churchill, Manitoba, looking back, with all the political ramifications (then and now) and relating to the appropriate entertainment for post-World War II Allied Forces. One of the most memorable accounts is about her father, who returned to being in the army in ‘Inheriting a War in a Chinashop’. Apparently, he had dreamt of running a china shop, but this never came to pass. He gifted his wife china objects, but suffering PTSD at times would smash them. LeBlanc weaves this dark memory with a particular moment in Slaughterhouse-Five. Like the rest of this book, it will stay in your psyche for some time. Vivres, which I am excited to read, centres on Daniel’s long-abiding connection to nature, the planet, ecology, pollution and memory. As a team Valerie and Daniel were the first to produce sublime and yet vatic video poems on climate change and are amongst the leaders in the field.
This is a very special occasion, not least because of its bilingual (English and French) nature, and I really wish I could have been there in person. On a broader note, not only are Basic Bruegel setting out from New Brunswick on a pioneering adventure, with a fresh and invigorating, Atlantic spray-washed collection of themes and authors, but, as you can see from the various images here, the design of the website is absolutely stunning, and a journey of discovery in its own right. Finally, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Valerie and Daniel for their painstaking advice and support throughout the production of Horse-Woman. After all, this is so much more to me than simply a book, but a record of my life.
A Video Presentation and Reading excerpt from Sarah Tremlett
To order paper copies of all the books mentioned go to:
https://boutique.basicbruegel.com/index.php/product-category/books-livres/
and also for Horse-Woman only, if you are in the UK or Europe, please go to: poemfilmeditions@gmail.com
NB: All PDFS can only be purchased from the Boutique at Basic Bruegel Editions (until October 1, 2025), at which point Horse-Woman will also be available as a PDF from Sarah Tremlett, as well.
