Friday, 23 September 2011

New poems from the Festival

More views of - or at - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


23 September

I produced these poems (for what they are) during the session with Jane Monson, the Festival's writer in residence, earlier to-day...



Christmas 2009

You were there
For midnight -
Wanted to capture
Images
Of worship, celebration

Made me so uneasy
That you'd be told
'No photography, please!'
And break the mood
The broken, anxious mood

But you always did
What you wanted
Always took chances
To record moments -
For what?!


© Copyright Belston Night Works 2011





Our feelings take the pictures

Are they pictures of our feelings?
And how do we picture our feelings -
To ourselves?

Can we know them?
Or do we,
By trying to capture them,
Change them

As measuring current
In a circuit
Minutely changes the current?



© Copyright Belston Night Works 2011





Why do I hate New Year?

If I do,
It's because balloons
Are just full:
Of air,
Of nothing!

Empty,
I try to drink in
Emotions
(Not in me)
Of delight

Delight?
In playing with
The encompassed
Void -
with Terror?


© Copyright Belston Night Works 2011



By way of explanation, the poems were written in response to Jane's writing exercises, which all arose from screenings of parts of Open Shutters: Our Feelings Take the Pictures, a documentary made by a Russian film-maker about how she and an Iraqi woman in the same field tutor other women (and their children) in Iraq in 1997 (?) in the skills of working out and telling a story in words and / or moving and static images

No comments: