FRIDAY VIDEO/FILMPOEM: 'Saltwater' by Glenn-emlyn Richards

Saltwater (2011) from Glenn-emlyn Richards on Vimeo.
A collaboration with poet Eleanor Rees. Reading by Lindsay Rodden.

You will watch this, fascinated. And you will return to the film poem and watch again, and it will seem new, as if you had not seen all of it before. Each time you do this, it will be as if you had not seen it before. Did I watch this? Yes, of course. And yet it is provoking new insights, more marvel. How does a film do that?

Between the reader, the poet, and the filmmaker artist, magic occurs. She is like Botticelli's Venus, is that why we are so transfixed? But she is an India ink figure, and not a fine Renaissance painting. The film work, the editing, brings her alive. How does her hair flow with the waves of the saltwater sea? Is it the call of the ocean itself?

Glenn-emlyn Richards had created a one of the finest film poems. I treated a group to a series of video/film poems, only a few, because they tired very quickly - poetry is demanding enough on the page, let alone strung at you in a video where you can't slow down, re-read, consider before moving on - but someone said, the one with the woman, the drawing, the ocean, that one was my favourite. In unison, they all agreed.

The animated images of the video travel like an imaginary documentary with images of the poem, but not with a photorealism. Rather we are in a world of the imagination of our world in both the poem and the film. Art on art. The way we cohere and collect our experiences in the artifice of our art presented without guile, simply.

The simplicity unravels us. We fall in love with the film poem. That one we want to keep, starred, bookmarked. But it passes away, as all things must.

And so I collect it here for you, so you may come back and journey again on the sea of Saltwater.

_
Glenn-emylin Richards, is a graphic designer, English television director, independent film-maker and musician. His films have been shown at many poetry film festivals. He currently lives in Normandy, France: wodum.co.uk/.
Eleanor Rees is an award-winning British poet and teacher of creative writing living in Liverpool. Lindsay Rodden is an Irish actress, playwright and author.

                              

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

direct link: PL: P(ink) L(ady)

For "International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women," which is today, November 25th.

                              

Language is the cage though which I express my passion

"LANGUAGE IS THE CAGE THROUGH WHICH I EXPRESS MY PASSION" 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2011, India and acrylic ink, gel pen, oil paint on Moleskine Folio Sketchbook A4 prepared with a base of acrylic matte medium.

After I had finished my NaNoWriMo writing early (10pm), and read some older poems I'd written, I got out my inks and paints... was up rather late with this Moleskine poem painting, tired today.

Among my papers were some prose poems I wrote on language some years ago and I suddenly felt an urge to break through language. Only, of course, you can't. Even visual representation, of any kind, is a pictorial language, learnt like anything else. But - the heart beating with its passion in the rib cage. The rib cage spread out in many (semiotic) lines. The dancer is an awkward figure, half harlequin I think, and eyes appeared in her breasts, which was unintended but apt. That rib cage became all of language invigorated (or enervated?) by our passion. It was a drawing I did thinking about these things, and perhaps it's a chart of them.

(Above and below were responses to comments at G+ by Raven M. Ridley and Larry Ayers, but way more than they asked.)

To me, she is a Spanish woman, don't ask why, in ballet shoes en pointe, with half a black skirt, only half, black hose to the ankle on the other bent leg, one arm clearly up, and wearing a corset with ribs (in which there are eyes). I thought of Frieda Kahlo when I added the red, again, no reason, can't answer why. The lines were like bobby pins springing outwards and opening. Her long black hair coming undone? Who knows.

And yet the heart remains in the rib cage; passion remains in the language that expresses it. I was thinking about Wagner's music, that Germanic passion, and the use of Tristan and Isolde in von Trier's latest film, Melancholia which I saw on the weekend, and Almodóvar, the Spanish director and the intense passion in his films. The blue is the sky, because we are always dancing in the sky.

What goes through an artist's mind while they are drawing or painting...

                              

The Falling Room - Nov 18th show

Halder offers these downloads of his radio show, The Falling Room, every week, and I really enjoy them during long night walks. Sharing, and not just because I'm in this one (it was a surprise this morning):

The Falling Room – November 18, 2011

This week’s show starts with three world fusion pieces; Lumin’s work “Lumin” and two compositions from Irfan titled “Salome” and “Monsalvato”.

Next is a well known Canadian artist to The Falling Room, The Violence and the Sacred, with their 1987 highly experimental piece “The Rivers of my Viscous Sperm” from the Lost Horizons CD. Another Canadian artist follows, Reinhard Von Berg with “Cult Figure” which completes the first half hour of the program.

The next half hour of The Falling Room continues with poet/artist Brenda Clews, with “What is Underground Is What Holds Us” from her Starfire album and Tetrix with “Imagination”.

I end the show with two tracks from the Polish artist Sulatus, from his new Tip album I present “Poland’s Sky” and “Not Sure”.


You can download the November 18, 2011 TFR here.

Please feel free to share the program with other artists or interested listeners.

Thank you for listening.
Joe (aka Halder)
Host and Produce of the Canadian Experimental Music Radio Program - THE FALLING ROOM
Broadcast live on Fridays at 8PM and repeated Tuesdays at Midnight on 103.7FM CFBU Radio

Royalty free music for professional licensing

Joe has played a number of poems from my Starfire album, here is the one he played last Friday (in case you don't want to download the whole hour, I wasn't sure - this player is easy to embed).