#15 - Les Témoins

Fay Roberts’s fourth sonnet this year is inspired by Agnès Varda’s nouvelle vague observational tragedy (can you tell I’ve no idea how cinema language works?), French movie, Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), written by Agnès Varda, and starring Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dorothée Blanck, and Dominique Davray

She turns the cards out one by one to see
the only colour in this tense affair.
But please don’t make a fuss, ma belle chérie –
you’ll mar this mask they need of savoir faire.

We flirt with luck, and check the numbers twice;
I don’t have time to list out all the signs
the auteur uses in this room’s device.
Ça ne fait rien – this angel’s not resigned.

What hope she has is sculpted in the curve
of friendship; stares define what she’ll become.
Grotesqueries abound at every swerve,
but c’est la vie – hold fast and chew your gum.

Mais si tu n’est pas fort, la chance prévaut,
car sinon l’avenir arrive… trop tôt.

Still sourced via The Criterion Collection

If you have access to the BFI, you can watch the 1:30 long, French language movie here. Content warnings include: medical concerns, cancer, period-typical misogyny, grotesque street theatre, racism. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

#14 - Chungking Express (1994)

This poem was inspired by Chungking Express (1994), a Hong Kong comedy-drama written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It’s an anthology film, featuring two interlocking stories about love, proximity and non-traditional expressions of intimacy. The perfect film to write about on Valentine’s Day! 

#14 – In the bar that you loved, I always almost see you 

your floral perfume lingers like a kiss

your menthol cigarettes reduced to smoke

we’re always never meeting here like this 

you are a conjuring produced from hope

proximity is such a fickle friend

uniting us in space but not in time

I write my name on napkins to pretend

that I am yours and that you might be mine

but we were destined to be passing ships

though once I thought I saw you by the door

I caught a fading smile around your lips

a smile I’d seen a thousand times before

an apparition bathed in pink neon

your perfume lingers longer now you’ve gone

LM 

Image via Wikipedia

# 13 - Andrei by Andrei by Andrei by Andy

Andrei Rublev, 1966

 

Where art is colour, life is monochrome –

regardless of the medium one chooses;

we need bright jesters, spurred by faith and muses

to pierce the waning of a greyscale gloam.

 

Hominid hands adorned sepulchral homes

to ease the pains of Neolithic bruises;

downtrodden slaves’ graffiti still amuses

amidst the dusty ruins of ancient Rome.

 

a toddler’s rainbow – light chromatic bridge

to soothe the hunger of a barren fridge

a vibrant tune, kaleidoscopic ditty

to cheer your view across a dismal city

 

We thirst for Art – the art must never stop;

but still: fuck off with all your AI slop.

AWB

for the video recording and more, visit Andy's Patreon 

#12 - The Pilman Radiant

(Russell J Turner)

This year we are using films from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts

Third up from me is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979 - #43), with a sort of stream-of-consciousness interpretation of its source material, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers

Regrets the mythic monument consoled
Oblivion with fortune in its fold
Advance, retreat where legends come untold
Do Not Pass Go as heat melts into cold
Sing shattered flowers faded by the stone
Intelligence has left you all alone
Down deep by ways imagined and unknown
Exulting onwards, backwards bone-by-bone

Perhaps our reasoning concludes too quick
Incomers from the cosmos, shoot and trick
Chimeric ghosts through deathly candlestick
Now cancer boils beyond the river bed
In colour bleached, in colour left unsaid
Come let your monkey save you from the dead

RJT

#11 - On Seeking Warmth

Fay Roberts’s third sonnet this year is inspired by Billy Wilder’s screwball/ gangster/ romantic comedy (kinda), USAmerican movie, Some Like It Hot (1959), written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (from stories suggested by R. Thoeren and M. Logan), and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon.

She says she loves the ones who play the sax
and, bitterly, she knows she’s in their thrall.
But now, in sweet escape, she finds that all
her wonder is encompassed in cold facts,
because it’s not the instrument that lacks
it’s her, existing dimly, sipping gall,
anticipating some or other fall,
while hope remains a glimmer in the packs.

If peace is what she’s seeking, heaven knows
she’ll never find it, playing with a band,
and millionaires don’t drop out of the sky.
So she’ll confide, and cross her fingers, grow
in confidence, while all this time a man
is lurking, as a perfect, single spy.

- FAR

Still from the movie via the New York Times

If you have access to MGM+, you can watch the 2:01 long, English language movie here. Content warnings include: gang violence, Prohibition, alcoholism, and misogyny. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

#10 - Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

This poem was inspired by Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) directed and written by Céline Sciamma. This is the first one on my list that I’ve actually seen, and it was a joy to use the themes of the film as a jumping off point for a poem. However, in thinking about a lady under water, I was also drawing on a short film called The Deepest Dance by André Musgrove and Ariadna Hafez, and the last book I read, Private Rites by Julia Armfield. 

Content note: Poem contains references to drowning. 

#10 – Portrait of a Lady Under Water

The day is shaking loose around its joins: 

the storm is breaking, making for the shore.

As raindrops fall like fractious, freezing coins,

all warnings lost in tempest’s surge and soar. 

My footing slips, I stumble from the quay;

the ocean swells around me, like a spell.

My burning lungs a painful augury 

of life and death in perfect parallel.

The world a blue and bruising monochrome

submerged between the surface and the deep,

I feel at once tenacious and alone, 

I feel the overwhelming urge for sleep.

And, though the lights around are growing dim,

I gather all my courage, and I swim.

LM 

Image via Unsplash

#9 - Joy In Ashes

 La Regle Du Jeu, 1939

Some games are more for playing than for winning

the rules are there to gently guide the fun

to leave the players satisfied and grinning

enjoyment trumping prizing who has won

this take of mine – more sinned against than sinning –

once had monopoly (forgive the pun)

the golden rule, writ large from the beginning

an infant maxim, taught to everyone:

 

It’s not the winning, but the taking part!

consoling oft, to mitigate the tears,

as toddlers meet and greet their maiden loss;

and worth repeating to those grumpy farts

whose jealous, urn-ward glances last for years –

it’s much more fun when one don’t give a toss.

AWB

for the video of this poem and more, visit Andy's Patreon