“Now I will tell my stories of bodies that change . . .” Ovid, Metamorphoses

Condition of Fire is a film by Alastair Cook of seven poems from New Jersey poet Jennifer Lynn Williams debut collection.

As her publisher, Tony Frazer, writes: “Ovid expressed the truth that to change is to survive, and this message erupts out of the poems in Condition of Fire, whose language and images strive to communicate in new ways the essential elements of myth, creation and the burning breath of being.”

The film features a commissioned sound work by Luca Nasciuti and stars the poet herself, on one of the last Kodachrome Super8 to be processed at Dwayne’s in Kansas.

Condition of Fire was premiered at Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick in 2011.