This month’s poetry film club looks at the relationship between images and words.
In the first half we are all going to make a poetry film by adding words to ‘Seven Risings’, a film created by artist Ben Glatt and composer and musician John Pendlington. This is going to be a fun and interesting way of understanding how the words work with the images!
In the second half we will view the new film and also a trio of poetry films made in collaboration with Lucy English and various filmmakers for her Book of Hours project. All these films were inspired in someway by visual images.
As usual there will be time for discussion, and creative exchanges.
Wendy Allen’s debut pamphlet, Plastic Tubed Little Bird, was published in 2023 by Broken Sleep. She is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her pamphlet, Portrait in Mustard will be published in October 2024 by Seren.
Catherine Balaq
Catherine Balaq is a writer and body psychotherapist. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prize.
In 2022 Catherine was a recipient of The Poetry School MA scholarship. Her poetry play ‘Fuck the Moon’ was commissioned by Paper Nations and short-listed for the Bristol Old Vic Open Sessions 2019.
She is co-editor of Black Cat Press. Her debut collection ‘animaginary’ was published in July 2023 and was nominated for the Seamus Heaney Prize for first collection and the Pen Heaney Prize. Her second collection ‘Deathless‘ is published with Verve. Catherine also writes novels.
(Shouted) Derek! They’ve stolen the geraniums again that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen You’ve snatched the world up of precious solitude which you have been craving for so long and realised it was in fact loneliness A life of collaborative A Level anxiety
Isn’t it rude to leave at the interval after you’ve read every fucking time leaving behind nothing but the faint whiff of an old fart? Liberation for Palestine is liberation for us all. Ask yourself what you are doing at this moment If I hadn’t written this would have you? I spent the day horizontal in the park
Please improvise this line and don’t just read out this To be cringe is to be free, apart from if you’re me right now in this exact situation There is nothing so bloody wonderful as genuine warmth and encouragement, and there is so much love here Rim Tim Tag I dim But to see you again would destroy the memory Marz
Lily Redwood lives off-grid in South Wales with her husband and two children. She writes about the everyday extraordinary from the political to the poetical. Lily combines spoken word with tender verse, which comes alive through her live performance. She has recently been Cheltenham Poetry Festival Slam Finalist and the Bristol Milk Poetry Slam winner.
Most of her poems are written on the notes app hiding in the toilet from her two children, or scribbled on the back of a shopping list, whilst burning the dinner.
Lily’s debut pamphlet, You Make Me Think of Swifts, is an unflinching and raw voice for motherhood, it is out now with The Collective Press.
Lily’s work has been described described as: “visceral, loving and brave”.
You can find lily online – @lilyredwoodpoet
Jay is a straight edge poet who writes on neurodivergence, gender, and the love of hardcore punk; doing so like he’s authoring an early 2000s emo LiveJournal post.
Since starting to perform in the spoken word scene a year ago, he has competed in UniSlam and Lyra Fest; and frequently haunts poetry events across Bath and Bristol
Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBT authors. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. She is a co- curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre, and tours her work nationally and internationally in a diverse range of venues, from Australia to Brazil. She is also a Poetry Fellow of University of East Anglia and the curator of the Koestler Awards 2023. She has judged several poetry and literary prizes including Jerwood Fellowship, the Forward Prize, and the Ondaatje Prize. Her novel of interconnecting stories The Night Alphabet will be published by Riverrun in Spring of 2024. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Her most recent acting role was in Blue by Derek Jarman, which was directed by Neil Bartlett and featured Russell Tovey, Jay Bernard, and Travis Alabanza. Blue sold out its run across the UK and more dates are expected for the future.
Bradley Taylor
Bradley is the winner of Satellite’s recent Summer Slam.
When we asked Bradley for a bio, all he wrote was: ‘Bradley Taylor (he/him) is a poet from Birmingham. Apologies.’
Join us on the 21st of August 2024 for Satellite of Love’s second ever poetry slam. Twelve competitors will put their words to the test in a battle of who-can-impress-three-selected-poets unlike anything you may have seen before*.
The winner of our slam this year will receive a paid 10 minute feature slot at our event on the 25th of September, supporting UK poetry legend, Joelle Taylor. Entry requirements: 14+
Sophie is a performer and poet based in Weston. She runs the Rhyme Against the Tide poetry slam in Weston and recently hosted to South West Showdown (Weston v Bristol v Clevedon v Exeter) at the Wardrobe. She is a poetry slam enthusiast and can’t wait to see what the poets at Satellite of Love have in store.
Emma Taylor
Emma Taylor is a multi-slam-winning spoken word artist, event organiser, and performer based in Bath. She is a Bristol Slam Champion, Coaches SLAM 2024 winner, and placed 2nd in the Farrago UK Slam Championship 2023. Her debut pamphlet, ‘Bed and Breakfast’ launched on the 25th April 2024 and is available via her website & and in selected bookstores now!
Emma has failed her driving test seven times. She maintains that she is simply ‘too bisexual to drive’.
Kathryn O’Driscoll
Kathryn O’Driscoll is a queer, disabled poet, mentor and editor from Bath. She was the 2021 U.K. Poetry Slam Champion and a World Slam Finalist and has been a judge for the U.K. Slam Finals for the past three years.
We’re 8 people sat on a boat, human connection is rare and very needed today, I received it here. Alarmingly dysfunctional, I can only just hold conversations with people that are as socially inept as I am. Henry sucky so good, I’m a psychoactive toad baby, lick me all over and see infinity. Elizabeth whiskers the tuxedo cat, but Pablo stole the show- If all the world’s a stage what did they build this stage for? Tiny terrapin laughs at the pink moon. Cortisol and hormones flood my mind, intoxicating blend of work and age and busy brain, exploding in productivity- 5-7-5 right? Was that enough syllables? Fuck it, never mind. Stick it in the fuck it bucket! Ho you can court me in my pantoum. My humps, my humps, my humpy humpy humps, check it out. I like flowers they look cool. Sick sleazy silk socks eat; but the other way around. I eat black holes for breakfast, sausage a plenty, discarded apple core, a porridge-thick sickly sticking- For the love of cider! There’s always free cheddar in the mousetrap – Tom waits. Satellite of Love No trigger warnings for you you only bring joy.
You know it’s bad when you consider turning to religion…
JLM Morton is a writer and poet whose work explores contemporary rural experience and belonging, ancestry, place and practices of care, repair and solidarity across human and other-than-human worlds. Winner of the Laurie Lee, Geoffrey Dearmer, Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust Poetry and International Dylan Thomas Day prizes, her work is published widely including in The Poetry Review, The Rialto, Magma, Poetry Birmingham, Places of Poetry, Sunday Telegraph and in the ethnography Living With Water (Manchester University Press, 2023). In 2023 she was longlisted for the Nan Shepherd Prize. Her first full poetry collection Red Handed is forthcoming with Broken Sleep Books (May, 2024). She’s poet in residence this year at Sladebank Woods near Stroud, a semi-urban woodland located between a housing estate and an AONB. Find her online at: jlmmorton.com
RED HANDED explores England’s rural textile heritage with a decolonising lens, picking apart the global threads and entanglements that were created and enforced by British colonial rule. JLM Morton explores ways of coming to terms with this legacy and how belonging might be found in the ruins. A long poem, ‘Sentient’ forms part two of the collection, cultivating close attention to the minutiae of the land, to the hedgerow as cultural memory and a preoccupation with the unnoticed and the overlooked. Sentient is a bearing witness, an observation of survival and an invocation to the world around us to persist in the face of climate catastrophe. In the final part of the collection, the poems explore an intimate attachment to place that reaches back to the deep time of an ancient Celtic past and finds forgotten indigenous women’s rites and rituals embodied in the hills, commons and waterways of home.
Praise for JLM’s work
Lalline Paul – ‘‘The literary daughter of Alan Garner – female psychogeography, a rallying call to protect not only the land, but our right to roam.’
Nan Shepherd Prize judging panel – ‘spot on nature writing.’
Red Handed – ‘a stunning debut’ (Monique Roffey), ‘an incredible book’ (Pascale Petit), ‘original, evocative and assured’ (Martha Sprackland).
JLM Morton has also selected two additional poets to perform at this event.
Caleb Parkin
Caleb Parkin, Bristol City Poet 2020 – 22, has poems are in The Guardian, The Rialto, The Poetry Review and was guest poet on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please. He has three pamphlets, his debut collection, This Fruiting Body (Nine Arches) was longlisted for the Laurel Prize and second collection, Mingle, is due October 2024. He tutors widely, holds an MSc Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes and is a practice-based PhD researcher at University of Exeter.
Sophie Dumont
Sophie is a Bristol-based poet and copywriter for two charities providing learning opportunities for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. Her poems have been published widely, including in The Rialto, Ink Sweat and Tears and Magma. Her poetry won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize and she’s working on her debut collection about her experience as a kayaker and the shitty state of UK rivers. Sophie’s held writing residencies on Bristol Harbourside with Boat Poets and at Exeter Custom House with Literature Works. Learn more over at sophiedumont.co.uk
And now I will start a new, fresh poem! This one is called:
As it turns out, defenestrating a politician is less impressive when their office is on the ground floor
Two tines of a plastic fork buried in the ground like some long in the root horse tooth
So what should we have for dinner tonight? ……. Dunno! What are you feeling? ….. Sigh. A daily struggle we have to daily decide. Guess we’re having nothing then. Oh, gimme a J20. Make it two please
I write my name on the gravy train as stars cascade into crushing crescendos I always tell the stars but I’m silent on you I’ve spent far too long in the fast lane, feeling all the bumps
Next door the accountants are saying: ‘people who speak of their emotions feel nothing’ and weeping silently into their spreadsheets
Gays slay the day away Be your own best mate! This is a very good night honestly Dream if you wanna go vaster
Slightly damp smelling but passionate, floating but not going anywhere Help! I’ve turned into a sentient boat. This isn’t part of the poem! Help I’m possessing the speaker of this poem! I’m so wet! I’m a boat! Help! I’ve realised how terrifying it is to be in the water
What is time but a cold slime on the sea Cow Girl!
I want to make a dress out of the razzle-dazzle spaghetti behind me Hair greasy, shines like the tinsel behind me The glitter screen is losing strands amidst the ear-splitting whoops
It is very important to use the twisty thing at the bottom to adjust the mic stand Touch it. Touch the mic Flex like Flex like Alex He struggles to lift his weights. But I’ve got hubris to keep me in shape A deep squat, deeper still becomes a sit
What if these clothes are my flesh and I have just broken the no-nudity rule?
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