Performances
‘They Don’t Make Gods for Non-Believers’, selected by Rebecca Perry and Andrew McMillan as the winner of The London Magazine Poetry Competition and recorded for the Scottish New Writers Awards 2020.
From The London Magazine Competition judges: “We were instantly drawn in by the voice of this poem – its strangeness, its ease with itself even in the face of such an uneasy subject, such a disquieting unfolding of events. With its masterful, regular couplets, this poem pulls itself into control; a control we secretly fear will dissolve like the ‘light / with all its grit and soft sine’ that ‘comes apart / into colour’. But right up to the final, shattering line, we are completely held. In reading this poem, we too are exposed to the ‘too white light’ – forced to confront our relationship to illness, health, belief, death, what we rely on.”
FilmPoems
‘Never Say Never Say Never’, directed by Adele Myers for the Poetry Society FilmPoem 2017, based on the poem by Patrick James Errington (narrated by Evan DiLauro, starring Layla Al Khouri & Sanoop Dinesh)
(Never Say Never Say Never – Directed by Adele Myers from Adele Myers on Vimeo.)
Worldwide Screenings include: Helios Sun Poetry Film Festival (Mexico) | Alibag Short Film Festival (India) | Goa Short Film Festival (India) | Pune Short Film Festival (India) | Blazing Sun Independent Film Shorts Festival (Texas, USA) | Mix Digital Narrative Conference, Bath Spar University (Bath, UK) | World of Women Cinema Middle East (Dubai, UAE) | The +Institute [for Experimental Arts] and Void Network 7th International Video Poetry Festival (Athens, Greece) | Lyrical Visions Film Festival (Auckland, New Zealand) | KIno International Short Film and Animation Festival (Manchester, UK) | South California Poem Festival Poetry Film (Los Angeles, USA) | Moving poems (Online screening – https://bit.ly/30rQ5I3) | Official Selection – Short to the point Film Festival Tour of various cities (Romania) | Film Poetry Live (Online screening – https://bit.ly/30tX7vW) | XpoNorth (Inverness, UK) | World of Women Middle East Film Fair (Dubai, UAE) | Bokeh Yeah! Poetry film special event (Fujairah, UAE) | The Poetry Society UK Premiere (London, UK)
‘Half Measures’, a PoetryFilm by Gabrielle Turner, based on the poem by Patrick James Errington. 1st Prize Winner of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre/IgnitionPress PoetryFilm competition (2019)
Judges Comments: Everything about Gabrielle Turner’s poetryfilm of Half Measures indicates it has been intricately conceived and planned. The concept of dividing the screen in half was a great innovation that not only suggests the speaker’s life before and after ‘she’ left, but also allows us to feel the poignancy of that loss by seeing past and present together at once. At times, this technique also throws up some remarkable parallels – on one side of the screen we see the protagonist making his bed, alone, whilst on the other we see a glimpse of the loving life that is now absent. Later in the film we see a calendar on one side full, we assume, with social occasions, whilst on the other side the calendar is completely blank. And later still, when the speaker thinks about the half measure in relation to ‘a child’s hands, still / sticky with the juice from a poorly-divvied fruit’, we see the child eating the fruit and gesturing towards the camera – an image that seems to taunt the speaker with what might have been. This is a poetryfilm that combines sound, word and image to not only tease out many of the key ideas in the poem but also to act as a powerful meditation on longing and loss.
‘Half Measures’, a PoetryFilm by Marie Craven, based on the poem by Patrick James Errington. 2nd Prize Winner of the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre/IgnitionPress PoetryFilm Competition, 2019.
Judges comments: Marie Craven’s poetryfilm of Patrick’s poem Half Measures has the feeling of an epic condensed into just four minutes! This is a beautifully shot and edited film which subtly treats a poem about loss and reflection with some magically matched images: a figure is indistinctly framed as the voiceover describes their contemplation of pictures by the Dutch masters; images of halfness occur again and again – the slicing of half a loaf of bread, half a man’s face is illuminated in the sunshine; and a small child movingly hugs her toy bear as if to represent an attempt at comfort despite almost indescribable loss. This is a superbly realised piece that serves the poem wonderfully well whilst being its own form of art.