Projects: Poetry Film Collaborations

Our Lady of the Rocks for The Book of Hours, 2018

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Poet: Lucy English (United Kingdom)                                     http://www.lucyenglish.com/

Soundscape: Bruno Gussoni (Italy)                           https://soundcloud.com/bruno-gussoni

Production & moving image: Jutta Pryor (Australia)                  https://vimeo.com/pryorart

  

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The Book of Hours is a calendar of poetry films. There is a poetry film for now and for different times of day, for every month of the year.

The Book of Hours is a contemporary re-imagining of a Medieval book of hours. These were collections of exquisitely hand-illustrated religious readings and accompanying images. They were created in a handy size so they could be carried by the owner and read on a daily basis. They can also be seen as interactive texts as these books were not intended to be read chronologically. This Book of Hours is secular but the general mood is contemplative and reflective.

All the films have been made in collaboration between Lucy English, a UK based spoken word poet, and an international community of film makers        https://thebookofhours.org/

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OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS is my second poetry film collaboration with Lucy English for The Book of Hours project.

                    

After seeing Lucy's call-out via Facebook group Poetry Film Live to interested film makers to fill the final places of poetry films for The Book of Hours, I sent an expression of interest to Lucy via Messenger.          https://www.facebook.com/groups/1727444064214170/permalink/1854738031484772/ 

  

Lucy's response was positive, and whilst experiencing a British winter in the northern hemisphere, suggested a theme related to dry places and sunshine, akin to my experience in the southern hemisphere at that same time.

 

Our last film had been about the sky, CLOUDS,  https://vimeo.com/203883502 and Lucy suggested, '... how about something about the earth?'.

Lucy requested some images from me with the intention of using them as inspiration towards the development of a poem.

 

My passion for photography and travel to remote locations around Australia made it very possible to quickly find and share a collection of digital image files online via Wetransfer.

I included links to my field recording on Soundcloud to 'Desert Song' of a bird recorded in Central Australia and a 60 second audio-story 'Escape', a progression of sounds from city to country that may have been of interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Hello Lucy, I've sent you a collection of images via Wetransfer ... if they are not what you have in mind then I can find others ... in mid April I will be at a remote cliff/beach location ... no swimming ... crocs ... possibly turtles ... do you have a deadline for your project? (Jutta)

 

The final deadline ... early October 2018. I received notification from Lucy that my files arrived on the 16th March, 2018, and two days later I received the following message via Messenger.

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"I have just sent you a poem and a recording of it! Very inspired by your desert images and sounds. Those huge desert scapes are very, very different to the landscapes in the UK but what amazes me that there is still life in the most inhospitable of places and also the debris left behind by humans". (Lucy)

 

"This is what I have come up with. I was thinking of a call to humans by the earth asking us to look after nature. I was intrigued in your picture about what was man made and what wasn't and  how bits of plastic are found even on the furthest corners and how we are possibly in a situation where we are on the brink of destruction. I have used the form of the prayers of Our Lady of Medjugorje but this diety is certainly not Christian! 

I did a recording as well and tried to keep it to a whisper. It could even be quieter.

None of this is fixed in stone (as it were!) so I welcome your feedback." (Lucy)

 

 

OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS

 

Dear Children, I beseech you to turn your hearts to love.

The burning love you find in the driest of places.

Grass still grows in the crack of a rock

and twisted roots push further into the sand.

The red sand ripples with the force of the wind.

 

Dear Children, I beseech you to go down the desert road,

where the thorn on the dry bush pierces your skin

and your blood is the colour of the crooked strata.

There are many layers between life and no life

and I am the purple flower that blooms without rain.

 

You are the dirt in the wind and the discarded blue plastic.

The branches stripped white and the flakes of old paper.

I am the split in the stone and the salt crust of the seashore.

The scorch of the sun on the pelt of the lizard.

The last circle of water on the bed of the lake.

 

Dear Children, I told you all which was necessary.

I entrusted you with this knowledge which you must carry with dignity.

Think of me now and how I shed tears at this vision.

You must decide to surrender everything completely.

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A second and final version/recording followed soon after by email confirming the title 

as being 'Our Lady of the Rocks'. I mentioned the possibility of including Australian rock art to Lucy along with my concern about the appropriateness of this and received the following response.

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''Thank you very much. I love the idea of including aboriginal art. The ‘voice’ in the poem is really the voice of nature itself rather than a deity, Christian or otherwise so including ancient images seems appropriate. All through history humans have tried to interpret the natural world through religion and belief and the poem is call for humans to pay more attention to nature itself. The last lines remind us, in order to do this, we have to sacrifice our current way of living because it is toxic. I don’t know what are the established ways of including aboriginal art and what are the sensitivities, as these are issues that are not much debated in the uk, but acknowledgement could be made in the credits." (Lucy)

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After sending my images to Lucy, I contacted sound artist Bruno Gussoni, based in Italy, via Messenger, inviting him to contribute an original soundscape to the project.

I was familiar with the style of improvised flute compositions that Bruno creates from our  previous collaborations. We communicated online via Messenger, as this is a good way of keeping a record of the conversation and making it easy to copy and paste into Google Translate if required.

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Before receiving the poem, I messaged Bruno and conveyed the theme and subject matter, and asked him to consider the notion of nature pleading with people to think about the future ... the red sand, the desert, our existence ... an urgency to act in order to save the planet. Several hours later I received five beautiful improvised sound files from Bruno via Wetransfer. Bruno had chosen to play the Xiao flute, a Chinese vertical flute made from bamboo and famous for it's soft, gentle sound ... a very breathy natural sound ... it reminded me of the wind and red dust found in Central Australia.

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It was now my task to bring together the elements created and shared via our virtual online studio. Digital word and sound files from the UK, soundscape files from Italy along with my moving and still image files from Australia.

I did not wish to present a literal visual translation of the words of the poem, something generally frowned upon by the poetry film 'community of practice'.  This has been much discussed in poetry film forums on specialized poetry film social media such as The Poetry Storehouse, a social media site no longer available.

 

Lucy had responded somewhat literally to some of my images, so I wanted to find another way of interpreting the meaning of the words visually.

 

I found myself working with beautiful yet slightly incongruous elements, incongruous not in sentiment, but in delivery.

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A poem in the form of a prayer using old English dialogue that is not in common use in Australia, 'I beseech you', spoken with an English accent to accompany a very iconic Australian landscape.

The sound of the Chinese Xiao flute, the instrument played by Bruno for the soundscape.

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I considered my options of omitting Lucy's voice recording, instead incorporating written text into the poetry film, or having the poem re-recorded with an Australian accent. I could possibly negotiate a re-wording, specifically for 'I beseech you ...'.

A didgeridoo perhaps instead of the Xiao flute, more in keeping with the Australian landscape.

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I decided to approach our collaboration from a wider perspective.

Given the international and historical aspects of The Book of Hours project along with my interest in online collaboration beyond physical space, I decided to work with our differences and to create a work highlighting our commonality in sentiment rather than our differences due to three diverse physical locations.

To give this poetry film a totally Australian flavour could prove to be counter-productive in achieving our aims to be inclusive and embrace collaboration.

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I turned my focus towards creating a spiritual work with mystique ... immersive and atmospheric ... with slow-motion image blends that work with the beautiful sound of the flute ... yet somehow unnerving ...

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The beautiful pleading sound of the flute sets the scene and I gave the piece space to affect the audience with the emotion of sound.

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My footage of red Central Australian dust contributed a mirage-like effect of Nature coming and going through the landscape, the opening scene recorded at The Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta near Alice Springs. 

I incorporated the dust between image blends and revisited the idea from the sound story 'Escape' ... moving away from the natural landscape to the urban one ... following the sentiments of Lucy's words.

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There are symbolic visual gestures for example the 'rock' as the 'heart' ...

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I incorporated an image of Bradshaw rock art from the northern Kimberley, an image that predates local aboriginal knowledge systems. The ancient strong image acknowledges the long history of man yet a short-sighted future ...

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I used Photoshop and After Effects to create a surreal and eerie atmosphere of a bleak future, whilst giving Nature superpowers to come back from the brink of death.

 

I wanted to use the full length of Bruno's soundscape, as it portrayed it's own story, giving it space to build emotion, at 04:04 almost sounding like a siren ... I matched this section section with a salt-lake reminiscent aerial landscape that is in actuality the close-up image of a kangaroo skull.

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Nature's words ... 'I am the pink flower that blooms without rain'... I make reference to at the end ... the pink flower emerges out of the desolate 'landscape' ... a symbol of hope.

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I have only just finished the poetry film and need some perspective to reflect.

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There has not been much time to gauge audience reaction, but my collaborators are very 

pleased with the outcome.

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I am no longer concerned about the different elements ... I've brought them close, and am very pleased with the experience of the collaboration.

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