Coming Up: The Festival in the Factory

I'll be reading alongside Roz Goddard and Roy McFarlane at The Festival in a Factory in Stoke next week. Friday 8th June at 4pm.

More details

What does it mean to be northern?

“How did we get here, eh? We’re surprised to find ourselves on the brink of a seismic shift in our national identity but how did we get to this? When did we stop talking to each other? Let’s start talking now.

If you’re connected to the North we want to start a conversation with you, wherever you land on the political spectrum, wherever in the world you find yourself now. We might not always see eye to eye, but we all care about this land and where we’re heading. Backbone of our Land explores what it means to be part of the landscape, finding out who we are through conversation and connections.”

Led by Peter Brewis and Degna Stone, Backbone of our Land is a premiere Folkworks commission of new music and spoken word features exciting artists including Bella Hardy, Sarah Hayes, Andrew McMillan and Kim Moore. 

We want you to be part of this project and share your ideas on what it means to be Northern, why we live here and why we stay here.

Join the conversation and let us know what you think about the North, being Northern and being connected to this land.

Getting Nearer

Here are a few more contenders for my Nearing Forty challenge. A fair few short poems amongst them as I'm trying to be kind to myself. I did think about adding 'The Loch Ness Monster's Song' but I figured that might be a bit too tricky so I've gone for Edwin Morgan's beautiful 'Strawberries' instead. 

There are some poems that haven't made it on to the list as I can't find copies online (Jacob Polley 'The Tree' and Andrew Waterhouse 'Not an Ending'). I'm going to try and find a few more before my birthday and then begin the task of selecting the final forty.  

I should probably add a couple of out and out performance pieces too... a quick trawl through the Apples and Snakes list of poets might be good place to start.

How to Cut a Pomegranate by Imtiaz Dharkar

For a Five-Year-Old by Fleur Adcock

Jarrow by Carol Rumens

Judith by Vicki Feaver

In My Country by Jackie Kay

You’re by Sylvia Plath

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by WB Yeats

Fear by Charles Simic

Darling by Jackie Kay

Strawberries by Edwin Morgan

A Note by Wislawa Symborska

Harlem by Langston Hughes

Memory by Ruth Stone

Although the Wind by Izumi Shikibu

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poem by Simon Armitage

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

The Dug-out by Siegfried Sassoon

Nearing Forty...*

I turn 40 soon.

I know.

I think I was more fussed by move from my teens into my twenties so I'm not stressing about it. Instead I'm distracting myself by thinking of 40 things I can do when I'm 40.

The first thing I thought of was to learn at least 40 poems by heart - partly inspired by the Poetry By Heart programme in schools and partly by being reminded of Invictus by William Ernest Henley following the death of Nelson Mandela. I reckon it can't be a bad thing to have an arsenal of poems to draw on for any situation life throws at you. The poem I have by heart (and yes, I know it's only four lines long) is Epilogue by Grace Nichols.

Anyway, I asked some of my friends on Facebook to tell me their favourite poems. The ones they've held in their hearts since the moment they heard them and they came up with some crackers. Some poems I already love and will enjoy learning by heart and some I'd not come across before. A couple are probably a bit too long to make it to the shortlist of 40 but it's been great to read. I'll be flicking through my poetry collections and anthologies over the Christmas holidays to add to the list but here are the poems that have been suggested so far...

After Long Busyness by Robert Bly

Everything is Going to be Alright by Derek Mahon

I Go Back To May 1937 by Sharon Olds

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

Indelible, Miraculous by Julia Darling

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Machines by Michael Donaghy

Night, Death, Mississippi by Robert Hayden

On the Grashopper and Cricket by John Keats

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy

Prosepoem towards a definition of itself by Brian Patten

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

The Identification by Roger McGough

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot

The Moment by Margaret Atwood

The Mower by Philip Larkin

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Sun is Rising by John Donne

This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

I'm probably going to blog about my approach to learning each poem (that will be another thing to try when I'm 40 - keeping a regular blog!). And I'm interested to see if I'll still have all forty poems in my head this time next year. We'll see.

*About six years ago I came across the poem Nearing Forty by Derek Walcott and now here I am...

River Runs at Live Theatre

I'm super lucky to be performing with a fantastic group of singers and poets this Sunday evening. Not only that but we'll be performing on a gorgeous set designed by none other than Gary McCann (it's not ours, it was designed for Michael Chaplin's play Tyne - we're just borrowing it for the night).

So if you're free it'd be nice to see you down at Live Theatre.

To coincide with Michael Chaplin's Tyne this spectacular night of words and music celebrates the River Tyne in all its glory, following in the great traditions of local songsmiths and writers. RiverRuns features specially written words and music from Aiden Clarke, Alfie Crow, Kate Fox, Ben Holland, Degna Stone, Jeff Price and Simma, and Bridie Jackson. It will be in turn humorous, occasionally dark, sometimes irreverent and always entertaining.

“It’s hard not to be taken under the spell of the river Tyne. RiverRuns, a celebration of the ‘big river’ in song and spoken word, certainly makes you think so. Personal narratives overlap with common histories; tragedy overlays euphoria. How this translates into a stage show is masterful in its simplicity.”

Review Jake Campbell 

http://www.live.org.uk/whats-on-book/riverruns

General Information

Sunday 7 July

VENUE: Main Theatre

DURATION: 1hr 45 minutes

SUITABILITY: 14+

Buy Tickets

£8; £6 concs

7 July 2013 - 7:30pm - On Sale

Poeting at the Lit and Phil, Newcastle

I have a new pamphlet coming out next week. It's called ˜ and ►, which you might think stands for circle and triangle or you might know stands for record and play. A couple of poems in the collection have those old fashioned tape recorders in em and I just liked it. 

Anyway - I've left Facebook until they get a handle on all those dodgy rape and domestic violence pages so I'm just using this post to let you know about the launch event at the Lit and Phil on Wednesday 17th April at 7pm. (It's free and there will probably be wine, there always is when there's poeting going on). It's a joint launch (a jaunt?) with the poet Ric Hool whose work I'm very excited to hear. Although that does mean that I have the usual doubts about how my work will hold up in comparison... Never mind though, eh? So, there you have it. If you're in the toon next Wednesday and you fancy a spot of poetry please pop along.   

http://www.redsquirrelpress.com/SquirrelEvent.html

Whistle by Martin Figura

Okay so it's like a billion years* since I actually saw this performance and wrote the review (for my MA in creative writing at Newcastle university) but better late than never. You can find out when Whistle is next on by visiting Martin Figura's website.

Whistle by Martin Figura

NCLA event at The Culture Lab, Newcastle

Thursday 26^th April 2012

A picture of a smiling young woman taken at some time in the late 1940s is projected above the stage as the audience take their seats. She has one hand on her hip, the other on her head. The show begins. A prologue, a poem as ritualistic chant, bleeds into the love story of Figura’s mother June and his father Frank. Her letters to her ‘Darling Frank’ are interspersed with poems about their courtship and romance. We get to know her, and like her.  

The style of the show incorporates animation and audio to accompany Figura’s assured performance,which takes us through the stages of his childhood. His birth is depicted using imagery that is at the heart of this piece. The camera and the image. Freezing moments and looking back at them with an eye that knows more than the subjects could see.

I am a boy

skin

slick as celluloid

my first focus

an iris

an aperture dilating

a click

The balance between pathos and humour is established early. The history that Frank tried to conceal (his time with the Hitler Youth and as a soldier in the German army during the Second World War) is revealed in the prose sections that link the poems. The darkness of the piece is never far from the surface and is present in the black and white stills of the young couple in love, the sweetheart letters from June and the idyllic family photographs.

                                                                                             

Humour guides the piece away from sentimentality; it frames the structure, softens what is about to come or lightens what has been.  It reminds us that it’s going to be okay to laugh, sometimes. Frank’s desire for Figura to become a doctor is comically shown through the poem Fountain Pen accompanied by a suitably lo-fi animation. It is clear the boy is incapable of looking after it let alone any would be patients. By the time the young Figura  journeys to Poland the momentum taking us to the central event in the show and in Figura’s young life is unstoppable. Frank’s increasing paranoia is powerfully evoked in Litany, with its ritualistic chanting undercut by the sparse use of bells tolling as he repeats:

She is a Protestant

She is faithless

She is poisoning me

Sie ist protestantisch.

Sie ist treulos.

Sie vergiftet mich

There is a brief pause as we see an image of Figura and his mother outside a pretty cottage – the image fades as Figura says:

I could print this photograph

so dark, there would only be

her hand on my shoulder.

The brutality of June’s murder is unstated in the poem In My Parents’ Bedroom, it is implied in beautiful simplicity. The room becomes the only witness to this act “the dressing table’s arms are full/ of fallen objects, its mirror dumb.” The horror is amplified by the sparseness of detail, the seeming quiet that surrounds it.

This poem could form the natural climax for the show and the collection but this is not all Figura wants to say. The story isn't over; the child still has to grow up. In the brief Q&A that followed Figura said that it was like the Second World War had swept through his family twenty years after it ended and the same would be true for many others. Whistle is more than a document of personal family history; alongside dealing with the trauma of his mother’s murder and the subsequent break-up of his family, Figura writes about war, mental illness, society, growing up in 1960s Britain, fitting in, coming to terms, acceptance and love.

Whistle bridges the divide between page and performance poetry. The collection came first but it is clear that the production took as much craft and care as the writing had done. The combination of AV and simple staging produces a show with immediacy. The AV enhances, underlines and sometimes gives you something you weren't expecting. Like the picture of Frank’s sitting room after his release.The accompanying poem Record  is about a Dansette record player. You can see it in the photo. But what you can also see is the picture of June on the wall unit. The formal portrait with her beautiful black hair and the smile that we've come to recognise. The impact of seeing that picture in that sitting room is one of the many remarkable moments when the images work with the poetry in  unexpected ways. Go see it.

*okay so it's only eleven months.

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit

"I was born on Azar 19th, 1360 in Tehran. That's Tehran, December 10th, 1981 in Christian years..."

Imagine being 29 and unable to leave your country. Nassim Soleimanpour dissects the experience of a whole generation in a wild, utterly original play from Iran. Forbidden to travel, he turns his isolation to his own advantage with a play that requires no director, no set and a different actor for every performance.


What on earth could possess someone who's not an actor to perform a script on stage in front of a paying audience without seeing the script until they actually get on stage? Without even knowing anything about the content of the script? Well not completely nothing - I have heard that there might be an animal impersonation involved at some point.

I'd love to tell you a bit more about White Rabbit, Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour but I can't. The less I know about the project the better as far as performing at Live Theatre on 24th February is concerned. I'm intrigued to know exactly what I've let myself in for. I know that I wouldn't have been asked to do it if it wasn't something that I was more than capable of so... I guess I'll just have to be patient and see what happens on the night.

I have to admit that I am a little nervous but I think it's gonna be a blast. I'll let you know how I get on.

You can find out more by visiting Live's website or the White Rabbit, Red Rabbit blog.

The Golden Hour: Infused and Bemused

Right this post is going to be brief. The extremely excellent Ryan Van Winkle asked me if I wanted to do a poetry gig in a van. I knew I'd regret it if I said no. So I said yes. Even though I was a little unsure about how I'd handle the intimacy of a very small audience in a small (but ever so funky) van in the middle of the toon.

I have some themes to keep in mind when choosing and writing my poems - I have a couple already that I know will fit perfectly but I do need to crack on with rehearsing, writing, re-writing, whatever it's going to take to make this gig really special.

Check out  http://www.gorillaperfume.com/ to find out some more background about the tour (it's sponsored by those rather lovely people at Lush) and to find out more about the other venues and performers

Take a tour inside the venue - Click here to look inside! I think you'll agree it looks fucking amazing. So if you're in Newcastle town centre on Friday October 12th... Come!

River Runs

I'm trying something new here... actually blogging about something I'm working on whilst I'm working on it... novel, huh? The detail is a bit vague at this stage but I'll know more later in September.

River Runs is a collaborative project run by Radikal Words (featuring Jeff Price, Alfie Crow, Kate Fox, Simma, Aidan Clarke, Ben Holland, Bridie Jackson and me). What with the whole MA thing I've not had a chance to have a think about what my involvement in the project exactly entails but I reckon immersing myself (see what I did there) in river poems can't hurt can it? I'm also going to spend some time getting to know the Tyne a little better - I've worked in a theatre alongside it for the best part of eleven years so I reckon now's as good a time as any to stop taking it for granted and properly pay it some attention. I should probably get down to ~Flow before it shuts shop for the summer too.

Anyway, here are a couple of the poems I've been reading.
Birmingham River - Roy Fisher
What the evangelist should have said - Kei Miller

So as I haven't got anything in mind I reckon I'll be defaulting to my usual free-writing to kick start the poeting bit of my brain. I shall also have to do something about the earworm currently on loop in my head - Drowned Lovers by Kate Rusby. (It is a mint song though.)

Deseeded Volume 2

Open publication - Free publishing - More andrew sclater

In all the rush we never did come up with a title...

Here's a short video interview that kind of explains itself if you watch it. As part of the Trashed Organ Fringe Festival for NCLA's Festival of Belonging I worked with percussionist Ged Robinson to create a new piece of work. At some point I'll upload an audio recording of one of the rehearsals but in the meantime you can find an extract of the performance on rashbre central. I seem to be doing my usual trick of going a bit faster than in rehearsals... that's nerves for you. I'll do a fuller post at some point about the project and the night itself (I always say that don't I?) - this is just an interim post as I haven't updated the blog for a fair while.

Leap Days and Last Days

So the Deseeded February challenge is at an end. Vol. 2 should be up now but last minute costume making for World Book Day have delayed publication by a day or two.

The final image in the February series was inspired by something Ann Cleeves said at yesterday's Life of Writing seminar:

"It's all about relationships... that time of year when people switch on the lights but forget to draw the curtains."

Go to Deseeded to see the full post.

Pics below are from The Writers Cafe at The Settle Down Cafe. Looks like its going to be a great place to write.

#1

What conversation has he just had? Who has he been speaking to? What is he about to say next?

I've got into the habit of taking a photo every day thanks to the highly addictive blipfoto and so I've decided to post a photo prompt on the Deseeded blog every day during February. Along with a couple of prompts which you can use, or not.

The resulting bit of writing could be poetry, flash fiction or a short story. At the end of the month I'll be publishing Deseeded Vol. 2 and I'll announce details of how to submit to the next edition.

On not being ignored

So performing Amuse Bouche at the Durham Book Festival was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be. Yes, it was busy and yes not everyone there was dedicated follower of spoken word but that's kind of the point. It's a challenge. And although it was hard to know if people were really interested or if they were just listening out of politeness it was still good fun. And between AJ, Sky and me we managed to attract the attention of passers by and the folks already sitting down to eat didn't harrumph off in a strop. So not as nerve-wracking or as confidence-denting as I was anticipating. Looking forward to the show at Live Theatre on 16 November now.

The very lovely and ever so busy Sheila Wakefield was at the Durham Book Festival too and stopped by to watch a bit of Amuse Bouche. Not only was it fantastic to have a friendly-poetry-loving face in the audience but she also gave me a date for my Red Squirrel Press pamphlet publication - Yay! It's going to be May 2012, which seems as good a time as any. Now I just need to pull the rest of the pamphlet together in time for the mid-December deadline.

Sorry...

I haven't been on for a while but I'm mad busy at the minute (what with Amuse Bouche, Verb New Voices, the girls starting back at school, uni starting up again, working at Live.... the list could go on). This is going to be brief. If you're wanting to hear what I've been up to so far then listen in to the next couple of links.

BBC Radio 3 - The Verb - this is only available for a week so be bloody quick.

SPL Podcast - A fabulous chat with the delightful Ryan Van Winkle.

I don't sound like a complete tit on either of these recordings, so that's a bonus. Hope you enjoy them and if you do please feel free to share the link.

Verb New Voices - catching up at mac, Birmingham

Sometimes blogging feels like bragging. I don’t want to blog about random or mundane things  (I don’t have the energy for it) and I don’t have the desire to lay my private life out for all to see if it doesn’t have anything to do with anything I’m working on.  So that just leaves the stuff that’s happening in my poeting life, which feels like bragging. Maybe it’s because I always feel a pang of poet-envy when Poet X blogs about making the My Poetry is Amazing shortlist or Poet B blogs about winning the Bloody Great Big Poetry Prize. Or even when I just pick up a collection of poetry that has such a visceral effect on me that I’m left wondering if I can ever hope to achieve the same effect in someone reading my work.

But anyway, back to the point of this post. Today we met up with all the other Verb New Voices poets and the wonderful Erin Riley and Ian McMillan for a second time. To be honest the project is pretty nerve wracking, despite the fact that everyone involved is really supportive and approachable it is such a big deal for me (and I imagine all the other artists). Working on your own project, with an amazing mentor, the support of the Arts Council, the BBC, ARC etc and having the chance to perform on The Verb… THE VERB… well, it’s a bit overwhelming. And exciting.

The last time we met up was back in May and today felt like another real step along the way to creating a spoken word piece, although it’s going to be a much shorter piece than I’d first thought because the Verb only requires about 7 or 8 minutes… which is still quite a lot of air time to fill. I’m glad I found that out before I start work with my mentor Zena Edwards on Thursday though. (Which is another thing I’m trying not to get too nervous about. I’m failing. But at least I’m trying. I’ll let you know how I get on at the end of the week.)

Last time each poet performed an existing piece. This time we were reading from our works-in-progress so it was interesting to see what stage everyone was at.  

First up was Fatima Al Matar who is creating a dark tale of child abuse that gives voice to the survivor at different stages of her life; then Mike Edwards with his fictional spoken word supergroup The Poetry Bandits (he gives voice to all three members and the man filming a documentary of their rise and fall); John Osborne is working on a piece that travels the scenic train journey from Norwich to Sheringham; Bohdan Piasecki explores the dark world surrounding the death of his uncle (and namesake) in 1957 and Deborah Stevenson’s piece brings an insight into the characters of IG1. And my piece which is kind of about me, but also incorporates shit I’ve made up because that’s what the poems wanted to do.

It’s not really fair to single out a poet’s work but there is something about the way Bohdan uses language that makes me want to read more, to listen more closely, to become a part of the world that is being created – even though the subject is so dark.  I can’t wait to see where his piece for The Verb leads us.

After hearing everyone’s work we got into groups to give feedback, which is sort of useful to an extent. The questions we were responding to were open enough but it’s hard to comment on something you’ve just seen even when it’s finished, let alone when it’s a work-in-progress that you’ve only heard once and don’t have in front of you to look over and consider and re-read.  We offered feedback in groups so it wasn’t possible to incorporate input from the writers at the end of the discussion on each piece.

I’m writing this post on the long journey back to Newcastle so I’ve had a quick read of the feedback for my work. Three sheets of flip chart paper look more daunting than they actually are. But even so, it’ll take me a while to digest and process the comments. Mostly positive with some food for thought.  

The only feedback I wasn’t sure about related to a glosa that I’m working on, the form uses four lines from an existing work as the basis for a new poem. Each line of a quatrain creates the last line of each stanza in the new piece.  The four lines I’ve used come from Epilogue by Grace Nichols - read it here, go on, read it. The trick is to incorporate those lines without them seeming alien to the poem and without the poem being overwhelmed by them. One point of feedback asked why I had used the “clichés” ‘crossed an ocean’ and ‘I have lost my tongue’ and what alternatives could I use. 

Once I got over the shock of hearing the word cliché in association with one of my favourite poets I realised that I’d assumed everyone was familiar with Epilogue and I hadn’t read it out before going on to the main body of the poem. Tsk, tsk. Anyway the answer is there are no alternatives because it wouldn’t be a glosa without those lines – I can’t change them. But maybe the lines that precede them (in the first stanza in particular) still need some thought… we’ll see.  All in all though, I’ve got some good questions to ask myself and it’s all prep for the scrutiny that the work will come under during the mentoring process.

We’ll see what Thursday brings.

Too busy for Father's Day

I'm feeling very guilty about that so we'll be having Father's Day MK II next Sunday so that Daniel can be spoilt in the manner he deserves. This weekend I'll be down at Live Theatre spending my time in the company of some rather fine dramaturgs and a group of six primary school pupils for the First Draft residency weekend.

This is my third stint as a dramaturg on First Draft, a project that involves helping a young writer to craft a short play that will receive a full on production in the main house... I know there are loads of writers three times their age (or more) who'd kill for the opportunity to have a play performed at Live. Every single word on the page and every word uttered by the actors will be the work of the young playwrights. We're not allowed to change a thing, we just have to help them to type up their plays and make sure we ask the right questions so that they can get from the 'fifth word' right to 'The End' . Because of this First Draft genuinely has the potential to be life changing for the writers involved and I'm thrilled to be part of it it again. It's going to be fun but really hard work but this time on Sunday night it will be complete and I can't wait to hear the read-through of all the plays. The productions will be part of the autumn season so there's a while to wait till I get to see the finished product but I can be patient...

You can watch excerpts from previous First Drafts here and read a review of last year's productions here.

Once I've finished at Live I shall be hightailing it up from the Quayside to meet up with a cellist to talk about collaborating on Songs from Whenever...I'm very excited/nervous about not wittering on too much. More details on that later though... my netbook is about to peg out.

Songs from Whenever...

and being on The Verb. That's right, I've just been on The Verb actually speaking to Ian McMillan. OK so I guess I should have mentioned before now that I'm one of the Verb New Voices spoken word artists. It's a spoken word development programme run by the BBC and ACE. Me and Michael Edwards are the poets working with Annabel Turpin at ARC, Stockton. It was great to hear Mike talking about the multi-voice piece he's working on - it sounds brilliant... Now I just have to remember that letting doubt creep in about my own project is counter productive... besides the very amazing Zena Edwards is going to be my mentor so it's gonna be belters! 


I should really find a succinct way of summing up what my show is about but my brain's not quite functioning at the moment so it'll have to wait. In the meantime, this is what I said on my application (so it must be true)...

Songs from Whenever will draw inspiration from song titles that link in with specific moments in my life. The piece won’t be pure autobiography, more a fabricated account of growing up based on my childhood and early adulthood;  exploring themes of memory, identity, education, disengagement, discovery and escapism.

Built around an event (most probably the point of leaving home or arriving in a new city), a point where the possibilities are still there, the choices are yet to be made… Each poem in the sequence will reveal more and more about the character, their world, the choices they face, the mistakes they’ve made and the things they’ve got right… or might get right, given time. 

Anyway, there you have it. And to give you a flavour here's an extract from my work-in-progress and yeah, I know it looks like a passage of prose but that's because it's a prose poem. (Incidentally, an earlier version of this was published in Sepia Souls anthology by ID on Tyne Press.)

There is something different in this hot school summer. I push the magnetic catch of the glass-fronted cabinet and reach for his records.  Selecting emotions and matching them to my own. I balance an album cover between skinny brown fingers. Against the white background two figures. A man. A woman. Each half naked, his torso/her belly, rump and thighs. The heat and sweat of my body distorts in the intense August light that still fills the living room. I place the record on the player, hold the arm delicately, careful to drop the needle in the groove not slip and skip and scratch. Relax. Outside, friends play in the dust of the estate, their shoulders, legs, arms bare.

thinking about structure

How on earth am I going to make sense of this? 

Glass Half Empty

It seems appropriate that the 3-minute self-reflexive documentary film I made for my MA was called Half Empty. I've just got my mark back.

Now this time yesterday I said to Daniel that I'd be happy with anything over 60 (a merit). I went on to say that if it was in the higher end of the 60-70 mark bracket I'd be really happy... But I'm not. I got 66. Which just means that somewhere along the way I've dropped 34 marks. It's put me in a bit of a funk really. I'm drinking beer in an attempt to alleviate the melancholy but I don't know if that's the wisest course of action.

Why am I pissed off? I just don't get it. The comments were good and the 'negative' comments were there to highlight what I needed to do to get a better mark. I've actually had to go back over the feedback with a highlighter pen to pick out the positive comments so that I can focus on what I did right - 'visually rich, textually rich, visual metaphors...Very moving story, very brave + beautiful... Essay has good references + awareness of the form... a solid piece with great potential. Look forward to the next one.' All good stuff, no?

So, what went wrong then? 'Mostly this suffers from too many good things all competing'. The pacing suffered- I just needed to give the viewer more space to absorb things. The brief for the film was to use a poem by Hafiz as a jumping off point... I used a whole poem in voiceover even though I felt that I was struggling to fit it in (the running time of the poem was about a minute...) And that leads to the final thing I got wrong... I forgot to analyse what I thought worked and what I thought didn't work in my commentary. Dickhead. I knew I'd tried to get a lot into the 3 minute film (ONLY THREE MINUTES DEGS!) and had struggled to find the space needed for the film to breathe... why didn't I say that???

I know I'll feel okay about the mark this time tomorrow and at some point over the summer I'll go back to the edit and craft a beautiful and succinct film... it's not so far from that now after all. I just need to get back to seeing things as Half Full in the meantime...