#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

#8 - Door of No Return

(Russell J Turner)

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

Second up from me is Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973 - #66), primarily influenced by my own visit to Senegal and Dakar about thirty years ago, particularly Île de Gorée and Maison des Esclaves (plus a small anachronistic nod to the Paris-Dakar)

The road to Paris ploughs through seas and schemes ‒
this motorbike won’t navigate those sands
whose shifting currents hide the whispered lands.
As ships sail out to all the world’s extremes
not far from Gorée’s echoed age-old screams,
where memory and monument still stands
to mark the manacles and fiery brands
that bled to manifest another’s dreams

Within the embassies we wait and yearn
for slips of paper worth their weight in gold,
as dimly then distinctly we discern
hyenas that bamboozle, thieve and burn
foundations of the constructs we’ve been sold ‒
illusions of departure and return

RJT

#7 - A Ragged Train

Fay Roberts’s second sonnet this year is inspired by Satyajit Ray’s groundbreaking novel adaptation: Bengali movie, Pather Panchali (1955), written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (author of the autobiographical novel) and Satyajit Ray, and starring Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Sarbojaya Ray, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta, and Subir Banerjee.

A mother’s worries never seem to end,
and father’s dreams are solipsistic, vast,
so what is she to do but scrape and mend,
and cling to hopes betrothed to class and caste?

A web of obligations resonates
in sickness and in health, and dimly lit.
As seasons come and go, she numbly waits,
her daughter not content to fret and sit.

She runs, and climbs, and perturbates, and cares,
and swears that she will never be a wife.
And what’s the punishment for she who dares
the crime of wanting better for her life?

You’ll find out, being hitched to faulty stars,
what disappointing creatures poets are.

Image of Karuna Bannerjee as Sarbojaya Ray from the Cinematograph review

If you have access to Wikipedia, you can watch the 2:04 long, Bengali language movie here (or on Amazon Prime with very different subtitles and worse image quality). Content warnings include: poverty, death, casual family violence. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

#6 - Late Spring (1949)

This poem was inspired by the film Late Spring (1949). It was by directed by Yasujirō Ozu, and was produced in Japan during the American occupation after the Second World War. I was especially interested in the aspects of the film that were censored (mentions of American bombing and occupation, and the Japanese traditions that do not align with American values specifically) and how the Ozu skirted these rules to make something that still resonates with Japanese culture at this time and place. You can read more about that on Wikipedia here, if you like.  

#6 – Tiny Acts of Rebellion  

I cannot write of city ruins here,

our script is flipped; the harrowing erased.

The absence curves, like question marks in space:

the gauzy veil of history hangs sheer. 

I cannot tell of occupation now:

it lies, like rubble, hidden from the lens.

And I’m reduced to shaking, making sense 

of censorship and all it won’t allow.

But, in the mise-en-scène, you’ll see it clear:

the English words, the Coca-Cola sign.

On celluloid, the darkened shadows shine,

the bleakness in the staging, rendered here. 

A portent, camouflaged for us to find;

rebellion as subtle as a sign.

LM

Image from Late spring (1949) from Wikipedia

#5 - das Feuer, die Stimmen, die Qualen

M, 1931

Some poets say that writing’s a compulsion –

like somehow, they’re afflicted with a curse;

they speak in terms of horror and revulsion

at something so benign as crafting verse.

“I need to quench demonic fire inside –

to quell demented voices, vent the rage,

and tear my psyche open naked wide –

eviscerate my torment on the page!

 

 

Suffice to say I differ from this norm –

my muse is cut from calmer cloth, it seems.

A privilege is poesy, not a duty –

the fire’s a spark that keeps me toasty warm;

the voices, long-dead poets sharing dreams;

the torment, only heartache caused by beauty.

AWB

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

#4 - shot-for-shot

(Russell J Turner)

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

First up from me is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960 - #33), along with Gus Van Sant’s pointless remake

Our Californian butchery begins
not far from Fairvale, where the Bates Motel
stands like a monument to filial sins ‒
a seedy small-town cinematic hell.

Conversant with the carnage that ensued,
some cineastes will bore us with the cast ‒
“But did you know the characters include
the wonderfully named Milton Arbogast?”

Then Gus Van Sant, in nineteen ninety-eight,
decided to completely replicate
this classic film ‒ a shot-for-shot redraft
that’s more to do with marketing than craft.
Though given Norman’s chosen tool of strife,
perhaps not shot-for-shot but knife-for-knife...

RJT