The Poetry Society commissioned four new poems from poets Jo Bell, Liz Berry, Ian Duhig and Ian McMillan for National Poetry Day. Produced in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project, a series of canal-themed poetry-films have all been produced by filmmaker and photographer Alastair Cook, and were premiered at National Poetry Day Live at the Southbank Centre in London.
Ian Duhig’s Grand Union Bridge returns to Paddington Basin, and the ‘old black canal’ of the poet’s adolescence. “I wanted my poem for Alastair’s film to suggest a place of transgressive glamour, including glamour in its own magical sense; a place where lines were crossed, even between the living and the dead,” says Duhig, who draws on references from 1950s crime movie The Blue Lamp and the Irish mythical otherworld Tir na Nog.
Grand Union Bridge is a poem by Ian Duhig; this film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project.
Grand Union Bridge was screened in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on 3rd October 2013, National Poetry Day. It has also been screened in 2014 at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.
Lifted is a poem by Jo Bell; this film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate project. Jo Bell was the inaugural Canal Laureate for the Canal and River Trust and The Poetry Society. Jo was formerly an industrial archaeologist and her career has since included running a fleet of historic narrowboats and acting as director of National Poetry Day for six years.
Lifted was screened in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on Poetry Day.
It has also been screened at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.
Liz Berry’s ‘The Black Delph Bride’ took her back to Dudley in the Black Country, after the discovery of an original Victorian canal map, with its dark and sinister-sounding placenames. ‘Enchanted by the feeling of ghostliness that lingers across the network’, Berry was ‘inspired by canal songs and murder ballads where a beloved girl all too often meets a sorrowful end in water.’
This film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate project.
The Black Delph Bride premiered in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on National Poetry Day.
It has also been screened at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.
Ian McMillan and Alastair Cook went to Stanley Ferry, Wakefield to make The Water Doesn’t Move: The Past Does. “The aqueduct speaks / In the voice of round here: vowels / Flattened by hammers, words / Shortened like collier’s breath” writes McMillan.
This film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate project.
The Water Doesn’t Move, the Past Does was screened in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on National Poetry Day.
It has also been screened in 2014 at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.