WRITING POETRY FOR POETRY FILMS: an exploration of the use of spoken word poetry in poetry films

by Lucy English


The Book of Hours is an online collaborative poetry film project, which forms the creative component of my PhD in digital writing. I am making forty eight poetry films to correspond to four different times of day for all the months of the year. This structure has been based on the Medieval Books of Hours, highly decorated and beautiful collections of prayers and readings which followed the Christian calendar. My book of hours is secular but is meditative in nature and intends to create a reflective mood. All the poetry films have been made in collaboration with international film makers. (English, 2016)

For the critical component of my Phd I chart the development of the project and the collaborative process. I also examine what has informed the writing of the poetry for The Book of Hours. Although the poetry exists in a poetry film form it also exists as printed text, a collection of poetry, which will be published by Burning Eye in 2018. In this article I have tried to unpick my understanding of the writing of the poetry, from initial inspirations, to its development as a cohesive collection, and what sources I have looked to for guidance.

My main challenge in the writing of the poetry for The Book of Hours has been to find a contemplative form of spoken word that can be translated to poetry film.

My background in poetry is through spoken word, and particularly through poetry slam, the energetic, competitive form of poetry begun by Marc Smith in Chicago in the eighties. (Smith, 2011) I started performing poetry in 1996 after I won The Bristol Poetry Slam, the first poetry slam I had ever entered. The Bristol slams in those days attracted audiences of over 200 people and were raucous, lively events. To stand out in a slam you had to be memorable. Most of my competitors were young, male and loud. The dominant style was comedy or social comment. The poets’ considerations were, impact on the audience, loudness of voice, and plenty of animated gestures. I only entered the slam because I wanted to present a different type of experience for the audience. In 1996 I was thirty-eight and I was already a writer of fiction. My first degree was in English and American Literature and fine art and I had recently completed a MA in creative writing. I had been to several slams and although I enjoyed the immediacy and passionate delivery by the poets I felt that the overall tone was predominantly testosterone fuelled. My intention to enter the slam in 1996 was light-hearted, I wanted to show that a woman could also stand up and do poetry. I also wanted to have a bit of fun. I won this slam and retrospectively I can see why. I wrote three poems with the audience in mind. They were crowd pleasing, energetic and well crafted. I didn’t need to yell, or moan because I could tease and entertain with words.

My entry into spoken word was a baptism of fire of sorts and in those early slam years I continued to stand out because I was different. At that time many people took up spoken word (or performance poetry as it was called then) because they were expressing what they felt about something. Spoken word performers came from a wide background of cultures and some emerged through recovery from their life experiences, such as Lemn Sissay, or were influenced by stand up comedy, such as John Cooper Clarke. In 1996 I was an unemployed single parent but I had a degree in English Literature so I had the knowledge of the British poetic canon to inspire me. Although I sometimes use comic devices my poetry is essentially lyrical. I want the use of words to stand out. Even in slam poems, which start with lines like, ‘Let me be your slut’, there are passages of description.

‘…and there you are in an alleyway that smells of cider and piss and elderflowers.’ (English, 2014)

Since those heady days of slam the poetry in the spoken word scene has developed. It is not enough now to shout out loud to your audience. The quality and the subtlety of writing has improved and quieter more reflective voices inhabit the scene both in the US and in the UK, such as Buddy Wakefield, Shane Koyczen, Warsan Shire and Holly McNish. The poetry I write too is no longer constrained by the slam format. I do not have to keep to three minutes, or think about immediate impact, or chose a topic that will instantly appeal to my audience. I am now involved in co-writing theatre length shows which may contain stand-alone pieces but also have multi voiced poems. The poetry in Flash, which toured the UK in 2010-11, is reflective and emotional and charts my and my family’s relationship to my Downs Syndrome sister. (Carmichael, 2010) In Count Me In, (2014-15) I created the character of Maureen, my polar opposite, shy and needy, she is a home bird who dreads the day she will no longer look after her granddaughter.


My main challenge in the writing of the poetry for The Book of Hours has been to find a contemplative form of spoken word that can be translated to poetry film. My usual way of writing poetry is to choose a narrative structure, to develop a story within the poem/s, and to use lyrical language to enhance meaning.

I found early on in the project that any narrative structure would have to be much briefer in a poetry film, or even abandoned. Detailed descriptions, explanations and dialogue, the bedrock of much of my previous spoken word poetry, proved to be too long and complicated. A poetry film does not need so many words.

I found early on in the project that any narrative structure would have to be much briefer in a poetry film, or even abandoned. Detailed descriptions, explanations and dialogue, the bedrock of much of my previous spoken word poetry, proved to be too long and complicated. A poetry film does not need so many words. In a film format the images and indeed the sound also carry meaning. This is the challenge faced by filmic adaptation of novels; much of the text has to be sacrificed to the image. Poetry filmmakers often have distinct preferences about which poems they want to use, John Scott, for example has worked with the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop , and produced a documentary film about her life using the poetry film format to illustrate her work. (Scott, 2011) Other poetry filmmakers, like Alastair Cook, adapt poetry that inspires them visually. (Cook, 2017) A current approach towards spoken word poets, when combining their work to film, is to create a film of them reading or performing the poem. Spoken word films, like music videos, rely on the physical presence of the performer. In the recent Nationwide Voice of the People campaign the poet sits or stands and addresses the camera. (Nationwide, 2016) The poems, although much shorter than the artists usual spoken word pieces, have been personal and confessional. I felt that such an approach was limiting. The Book of Hours isn’t a confessional project, it isn’t about ‘me’, it is designed to convey a mood or an atmosphere. I needed to investigate the original Books of Hours, discover what they offered their readers, and how I could translate this into the writing of the poetry.

A medieval Book of Hours was a collection of religious readings and accompanying images. (Fay-Sallois, 2005) By the fourteenth century these had become highly decorative works of art and many were produced by craftsmen for wealthy patrons. The book began with a calendar illustrated by images of activities connected to each month, such as sowing crops, harvest and feasting. The subsequent texts were divided into sections that replicated the religious activities of the monastic life. One of these sections was the ‘Hours’, a series of prayers and readings spanning a complete day and night and changing with the religious season. The ‘Hours’ were therefore a template for religious life, spirituality, reflection and connection to God.

The purpose of a Book of Hours was for lay people to follow this religious structure. In our secular times we can underestimate the importance of the Christian calendar in medieval times. The Christian calendar represented an unwavering structure in an uncertain world and the progression from Christmas to Easter to Ascension would be imbedded in the minds and habits of everyone. The monastic life was seen as the epitome of behaviour and direct connection with God was desirable. For an ordinary person to posses access to the religious life, in book form, was also highly desirable. It was common in medieval art, and also in the pages of the books of hours, for the patrons to be depicted in religious scenes, such as witnessing the birth of Christ or worshipping at the feet of the Virgin, thus placing themselves directly into the holy narrative. In the medieval mind saints could be ‘talked to’ through prayer and requests to God, Jesus and Mary were as common as our ‘wish lists’ of shopping needs.

A Book of Hours was a layperson’s handbook to Christian devotion. They were created in a portable size so they could be carried by the owner and referred to on a daily basis.

In The Morville Hours, a contemporary re-working of a Books of Hours, Katherine Swift acknowledged the desirability and extent of the medieval texts.

‘They are at once the most visible and the most intimate of medieval books, very widely disseminated yet used in an intensely private manner by individuals, often women, in the privacy of their own chambers’ (Swift, 2008, p. viii) She also calls them ‘The ‘best sellers’ of their day’

A Book of Hours can also be seen as an interactive text as these books were not intended to be read chronologically. The reader chose which readings to refer to according to time of day, season and spiritual mood. The most noted example of a Book of Hours created for a wealthy patron is the Tres Riches Heures commissioned by John the Duke of Berry between 1412-1416 and illustrated by the brothers Limbourg. This is currently held in the Musee Conde in Chantilly, France. (Limbourg, n.d.) The Duke of Berry was a passionate collector of books and his library contained more then fifteen Books of Hours. The Tres Riches Heures is a supreme example. The illuminated pages are exquisitely illustrated; they depict a calendar of the month, the signs of the Zodiac and scenes from life, according to the seasons.

What I gained from my understanding of the medieval Books of Hours and what I felt I could translate into my project were the following aspects: The text, (and in my case the films) would be an embarking point for reflection. This reflection would not be a religious one but a contemplative one, offering responses to modern life and situations. It would be presented in a calendar format, following the months of the year, times of day and the seasons. It would contain a linear structure (a calendar year) but the reader/viewer could choose when and where they accessed the films. My final aim was to somehow replicate the everydayness of the medieval Books of Hours, and to depict the ‘illustrations in the margins’, the detailed observations of daily life.

I now needed to find other writers who had attempted to create a modern version of a Book of Hours. The first poet I investigated was Rilke. His Book of Hours, Das Studenbuch, was written, in German, in three parts between 1899 and 1903. It is a philosophical as well as a religious text, for Rilke was not an orthodox Christian and the God he addresses is a human facing God rather than a remote entity. His manner of addressing God is akin to Manley Hopkins, it is personal and direct. Rilke is looking for answers, for meaning in life, but he is also conflicted about what he sees as the visceral link between man and deity.

‘Put out my eyes, and I can see you still;
slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
and without any feet can go to you;
and tongueless, I can conjure you at will.’ (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1941, p. 37)

Rilke challenges not that a God exists but that God needs mankind in order to exist. The link between man and God is inescapable.

‘What will you do, God, when I die?….you lose your meaning, losing me.’ (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1941, p. 33)

Rilke’s impassioned search is not one that I share but I did appreciate his direct and simple language, his use of addressing an unseen person combined with his use of statements within the poetry. ‘And you are like a stone, that draws him to a lower depth each day.’

I was particularly interested in his use of questions, sometimes rhetorical or sometimes as an opening gambit for further dialogue. ‘What will you do, God when I die? When I your broken pitcher lie?’ I use plenty of questions in my own poetry, ‘Wild girl where are you now?’ ‘Did they know that they were dying?’ ‘Will you find a mountain top with a silver palace?’ (English, 2016) The poems most informed by my reading of Rilke are ‘Drive Through the Night’ and ‘Now is the Time’. The first addressed to my dying brother as he contemplates a death with no belief in an afterlife and the second reflects how one memory can link one event into another, but the overall feeling is still of loneliness. ‘I throw bread to the ducks but they do not come.’ (English, 2016)

What I did not find in Rilke’s poetry was richness of description and a specificity of location. His fields, clouds and seas are generalised rather than particular. Much of the poetry for The Book of Hours was written in various locations in the Welsh Marches. This was unintentional. I wanted to go away and write and I booked a cottage within two hour’s drive of my home. However, the surrounding landscape, the apparent remoteness of the location, the lushness of the hedgerows and a pervading sense of history crept into the poetry and on subsequent writing breaks I have chosen to be near or in The Golden Valley in Herefordshire, Radnorshire, or on the slopes of Sugar Loaf mountain. I do not live here but it feels like this stretch of country is my spiritual heartland. To convey this sense of connectedness I looked to the prose of nature writers.

There has been resurgence recently in writing about the British Countryside, not writing it as a history or as a reference guide but writing about the experience of it, akin to Richard Jefferies; the emotional connection to place. Most well known is Robert MacFarlane who seems to have trampled to every single remote place in the UK and reflected on his experience of being there. (Emmanuel College, 2007)This type of writing contains detailed and knowledgeable observations about wildlife and flora, descriptions of weather patterns, and plenty of historical and biographical reflection. Other types of writers have contributed to this body of work such as poet Kathleen Jamie who writes about the Scottish coast, and Anna Pavord, the garden writer. Writing in this vein is Katherine Swift whose The Morville Hours, is the story of the creation of a garden. (Swift, 2008)

Swift acknowledges the influence of the early Books of Hours on her initial plans for her garden and also in the structure of her account. The chapters are divided into sections with the names of the original ‘hours’; Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline and each chapter represents the changing seasons. Her previous work as keeper of early manuscripts at Trinity College, Dublin gave her an intimate knowledge of these manuscripts and she, like myself, is fascinated by the detail.

‘In the world of the Books of Hours, tiny emblematic figures dig, prune, sow, chop wood, mow grass, reap grain, tread grapes, each in their allotted month.’ (Swift, 2008, p. 9)

She mourns the loss of the agricultural and religious calendar in modern life.

‘In a world of electric light and central heating, where one month is much like another, and vegetables are flown from Kenya…’ (Swift, 2008, p. 9)

Not only are we separated from the connection with the seasons we have lost our connection with the ‘great story’ of the Christian calendar, the story of birth, growth, death and rebirth. The Morville Hours is an attempt to draw our attention back to the wonder and beauty of the growing world as seen through the eyes of a passionate gardener. At the heart of the narrative is the construction of her garden and her emotional progress as she develops it, but the book contain a history of the occupants of Morville Hall, reflections on our changing attitude towards nature and society, and the story of her relationship with her family. It is also a contemplation on the nature of time. Gardens, she realises only exist because somebody gardens them, and her time on earth is limited.

‘As I grow older, the wild roses press against the outside of the yew hedges; the long grass whispers to me. A garden is a process, not a product.’ (Swift, 2008, p. 332)

She connects to her reader by placing her descriptions of her garden in the present tense, even through we learn that she started working on it in 1988. We are drawn into her sense of wonder as she addresses us directly.

‘Don’t blink. Beneath the wall the bearded irises are in bloom, the tall uppermost petals so gauzy, so delicate, that each bloom, once opened, lasts hardly longer than a day. Look, you can almost see through them.’ (Swift, 2008, p. 168)

This is a clever strategy and is probably one of the reasons why so many people, including myself, love this book. Her prose is intoxicating and her use of detailed descriptions and sense of timelessness do indeed create for me a similar response to reading an illuminated manuscript.

I am a critical reader though, and although I enjoy the way she writes about irises, or roses, or lavender I am aware that her account has airbrushed out much of her life. She does not write about the difficulties of driving to the supermarket up country lanes in January, or trying to earn a living in the countryside. We only learn via a few sentences that she took on work for the National Trust and David Austin roses, that she became ill with ME, that she possibly is bi polar and is certainly an obsessive.

‘He (my husband) understood, and continues to understand why I can’t bear to come in until long after dark, why I spend all my money and then borrow more, why I am always exhausted, always late for everything, never want to go on holiday’. (Swift, 2008, p. 332)

In my Book of Hours I want more light shone onto the complicated areas of human experience. I am aware that my relationship with the natural world is not straightforward. I love being in a stone cottage, and writing about landscape, but I live in a city. I am far too used to the trapping of urban living, coffee shops, fast internet, circle of friends, to give these up and live in a remote location. I can recognise some wildflowers and birds but I do not have the deep knowledge of a nature writer, such as Stephen Moss.

‘On either side of the path, I hear the echoing song of eight different species of warbler. Chiffchaffs constantly call out their name,…the willow warbler sings his silvery descants in reponse, Blackcaps and garden warblers duet in the sallows, while Whitethroats launch themselves into the air…’ (Moss, 2017, p. 265)

Eight species of warblers! I am not sure I can identify two! I am aware when I am in the countryside how dumb I am. I want to explore the tension between appreciating landscape but not knowing how to interpret it. In poems such as ‘Aubade’, ‘Sheltering From the Rain in a Country Church’, and ‘Can’t Sleep’ (English, 2016), the narrator is displaced, dislocated and alone. There are city dwellers who find the British Countryside inexplicable. Cottages are dark and dingy and cold. A day of rain can make walking impossible and more rain can interrupt driving. Roads get blocked by fallen trees, strayed cattle and slurries of mud. And the wifi is slow. Our countryside is not benign. If you get lost in the mist up Offa’s dyke you could fall off a steep edge or suffer from exposure. In 2008-11 nine people died in the British countryside due to being trampled on by cattle. (BBC, 2011)There are also those who drown. In poems such as ‘May Queen’, ‘My Mother’s Garden’, ‘Daisy Chain’, and ‘Time and The River’ I hint at an underlying uneasiness about being in landscape and a sense that the pastoral scene described is fleeting, or something I have misremembered, or contains the repressed emotions of fractured relationships.

“Like that day we walked the path by the Severn, mud up to our ankles.
I can smell the water now. Fishy like old seaweed, seeped out of the mist,
and you telling me there is no river of Time”. (English, 2016)

Many of the viewers of The Book of Hours will be city dwellers as more people live in cities than in towns, and many of the viewers will not be British at all. People who visit the UK often expect to find something like a Jane Austen novel, with a pastoral landscape of pretty villages, ancient churches and grand houses. It is a common mistake for visitors to look at a map of the UK and think that one can visit London, Bath, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Oxford in two days because they seem so close together in terms of distance. I want to explore something of the reality of modern Britain. In ‘Hipster Central’, ‘Do Nothing’, ‘What Is Love?’ and ‘From This Train’, the locations are urban and even if the places are recognisable cafes, bedrooms and trains they can still be places for reflection.

“From this train the houses
now become fields dug up
and shredded becoming more houses.
I fear nuclear power.
A concrete landscape and buried trees.
The president cuts the pink ribbon”. (English, 2016)

What I learned from my reading of The Morville Hours is how to bring my readers into the writing and create a sense of contemplation by using specific descriptions, direct speech and the present tense.

‘The rain has stopped. I like the feel of empty quiet. I have too often chosen this instead of company. I wonder how much I have missed?
I go outside and goldfinches skim across a wildflower meadow
of blue campanulas and purple knapweed.’ (English, 2016)

Poetry about landscape has a long history in the UK and many poets both classic and modern have turned to their immediate locality for inspiration. Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote about Somerset and The Lake District, Housman’s ‘blue remembered hills’ are in Shropshire, and Edward Thomas, Ted Hughes, R.S Thomas and Philip Larkin tried to find a modern way of interpreting landscape rather than using the generalized and pastoral. Alice Oswald’s impressive ‘Dart’ and ‘Sleepwalk on the Severn’ were more recent collections which explore human interaction with landscape. Paul Farley writes about the recent past as if it were a foreign country and he draws our attention to ordinary things such as railway tunnels, bus stops and stations.

I revisited these poets in my research for this project and I have noted how Edward Thomas leaves his poems on a melancholy note, how Ted Hughes turns to the Anglo Saxon for impact and is not afraid to tackle the blood and guts of the countryside. How R.S Thomas writes with care about rural characters and how Philip Larkin reminds us of the constant interruption of the modern world. My ‘Sheltering from the Rain in a Country Church’ is an unashamed creative response to his poem ‘Church Going’. Alice Oswald gives us the multiplicity of voices, historic and imagined, contained in landscape, and her keen eye takes in the details of plants and trees. Paul Farley writes without sentimentality about the past and uses humour to draw us into his poems. Other poets I read for research included, Basil Bunting, Michael Horovitz, Peter Riley and Pauline Stainer.

Writing about landscape is also the place for an experimental approach. Poets such as Basil Bunting used dialect words and words from older vocabularies, such as Norse, to describe the subtleties of the countryside. Harriet Tarlo, in her introduction to The Land Aslant, says

‘Language is the form in which landscape can come alive’ (Tarlo, 2011, p. 10)

She is one of a group of contemporary poets who produce what she calls, ‘Radical landscape poetry’ and although the poets in her edited anthology write about different locations she sees them as having similar aims.

‘There is a recognition that this process of shift and adaption occurs in a world in which natural and cultural, wild and urban or industrial elements exist in all those places where we exist.’ (Tarlo, 2011, p. 12)

I certainly feel close to this statement. I am aware that my urban trappings come with me wherever I go. I cannot escape my need to find petrol or the sounds of the transatlantic planes in the sky above me. (English, 2016)

The poets in The Land Aslant anthology write about the experience of being in landscape, often walking through it, witnessing what they see and feel, and it can read like field notes, intense, fragmented and breathless. The poets I was most drawn to in this collection were Zoe Sloulding, Helen Macdonald, Harriet Tarlo and Carol Watts, who writes about mid Wales. They are also women. How can women write about landscape without drifting into a pagan/goddess/ancient religion narrative? One way is through close observation. Here are the opening lines from Zoe Skoulding’s ‘In the forest where they fell’

‘Everything’s here at once, the green relieved
by streaks and veins of lighter tints and black. Purplish
glacous berries. Time spirals out of seed/pushed inside its grave:’ (Tarlo, 2011, p. 130)

I like it that she doesn’t tell it us what the berries are (remember those eight types of warblers?), maybe she doesn’t know. We experience the scene as she experiences it.

These poets also stretch language and form. Carol Watt’s ‘Zeta Landscape’ poetry cycle has little punctuation and uses spaces in the sentences to suggest a pause for breath. Zoe Skoulding in her ‘Through Trees’ sequence uses a thin linear form to suggest the form of the tree itself and the gaps between them. Harriet Tarlo places words and phrases all over the page to suggest the way the eye travels across a scene and where our attention lands. Helen Macdonald uses dialect and archaic words to give a vocabulary to actions and things that are not modern, ‘spreketh’, ‘ cuttle’ ‘falln.’

I certainly have been encouraged by this approach to be more experimental and to play more with form and language. In ‘Can’t Sleep’ I have broken up the sentences to replicate the train of thought and the interaction with the immediate environment.

“Things with no eyes live in caves. Don’t think about them.
No mouths. Don’t think about them. Or spiders. Did one just crawl
across my face? Gooey black inside a treacle tin. Doesn’t
even taste nice. Sticky and burnt” (English, 2016)

Any inheritors of Basil Bunting are bound to be concerned with the sound of words. Bunting made up words, used forgotten words, created words to convey his emotional connection to landscape. There are a few spoken word poets in the UK who use this experimental approach to language and Hannah Silva Is the most noted (Silva, 2013). Her performances rely on the control of her voice and her movements to convey meaning. Her 2015 performance Schlock uses British Sign Language and she remarks in her blog how she had to focus on her body for this show.

‘Where my spoken language might skip details of character, place and attitude, this is an intrinsic part of sign language. The materiality of the body and face took the role that in my work is usually played by the materiality of the voice,’ (Silva, 2015)

I am aware that my viewer will experience the poetry in The Book of Hours through sound rather than through gestures or body movements. I have been told that I am a ‘good reader’ of my work. I use pauses, emphasis of certain words and I can express the emotion within the poem. The poems in The Ground Aslant benefit from being read and read again but even when I read some of them aloud I felt I was no closer to understanding them. I do not want to put off my viewers by being obscure. My viewers may not be avid readers of poetry, know anything about poetry, or they may think that ‘poetry is not for them’. In my practice of spoken word I am familiar with this type of audience and I can win them over. Many people approach me after a performance and say ‘I don’t usually like poetry but I like yours’. I am not ashamed to be accessible or populist even. So I have made the decision not to go fully down the experimental path for The Book of Hours. I may tease my audiences with word and sound play but I want them to find something they can relate to in each poem and want to revisit it.

I may tease my audiences with word and sound play but I want them to find something they can relate to in each poem and want to revisit it.

It’s a good question for me to ask, ‘Who is my audience?’ The audience for spoken word is larger, (in terms of numbers), more diverse, and possibly less poetically aware than the audience for the radical landscape poets. When I first started performing poetry back in the mid nineties most of the body of work was dismissed by the page poet gatekeepers as irrelevant. Performance poetry, and slam poetry was seen as the noisy, scruffy little sister of the great big brother of ‘proper poetry’. It was seen as artless, unstructured, too emotional and messy. Spoken word poetry was not printed as no publishing house would print it. The reaction to this by the spoken word community was to say ‘So what?’ and the scene developed its own heroes and champions who were not on the lists of Carcanet, Faber and Bloodaxe. There are some key players from those early days, such as Francesca Beard, who have received accolades and awards but who are still not in print. (Beard, 2012) This lack of printed material led the spoken word poets to be more creative with how they distributed their work. The live performance was the bedrock of this type of poetry but spoken word poets recorded themselves and sold cd’s, filmed themselves and put the clips on Youtube and on their websites. Their work could now be accessed outside of the live performance and by anybody who wanted to access it. It could be argued that the current rise of interest in spoken word is solely down to Youtube sharing. Current ‘stars’ of the spoken word scene, such as Kate Tempest, Hollie McNish, Buddy Wakefield and Shane Koyczen did not invent this phenomenom but they have benefitted from it. The current situation is more complex. Indie publishers now publish spoken word poets, beginning with Burning Eye in 2012. (Birnie, 2012) There was a hunger by people who had witnessed spoken word poetry, either as a live performance or as a Youtube clip to read it. The availability of spoken word poetry in print form has been a game changer, certainly in the UK. In America the slam poets all had ‘merchandise’ which they sold at gigs, and this included self published texts of the poems. They had professionally made cd’s, chapbooks, and film material. In the UK this was more peicemeal and it seems we are not so good at ‘selling ourselves’ as our American cousins.

When spoken word appeared in printed form the quality of the writing and the craft was made more visible. A live performance can seem artless, the poet talks and we listen, we become involved in the performance and we do not notice how the poet has used repetition, or alliteration, or metaphor or many of the devises that we ascribe to excellent poetry. I could liken this to a stand up comedy performance. We laugh, and respond to the performer without acknowledging that the performance is crafted, it is not ‘spontaneous’ although it may include improvisation. In print the ‘artlessness’ of spoken word poetry can be challenged. It is evident how the poet has used words in a deliberate and crafted fashion even if they do not have a traditional poetic background. The page poetry community cannot now dismiss spoken word as ‘just talking’ or ‘un edited’, the skill of the writer is now visible on the page. I hope that the two versions of The Book of Hours will enhance the experience of its audience. They can see the films, hear the poems and if they want to read the text they can do so in the printed form.

There is not the space here to investigate how this new accessibility of printed spoken word is changing the UK poetry scene, but the work of Kate Tempest is now discussed on BBC radio four and in newspapers such as The Guardian and The Telegraph ,and three spoken poets were shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes award which favours ‘excellence’ in poetry and ‘outstanding’ contributions to ‘cultural life; Salena Godden, Jay Barnard and Hollie McNish. (Society, 2009)The 2017 winner was Hollie McNish. Previous winners of this award have been Alice Osward, Lavinia Greenlaw and Andrew Motion, so spoken word poetry is now well and truly not a messy little sister anymore.

Spoken word poets can now develop their craft further and see the wider possibilities of combining words with moving image. Spoken word poets, due to their previous status, have always been innovators. They championed the quality of live readings and audiences now complain about the lack of some ‘famous’ page poets to engage with them at live events. Spoken word poets know that you need to make eye contact, give space for pauses, and not hide behind a book. Spoken word poets have learned to adapt their work to print, to question their use of language and to find out what layout on the page best suits, and this has been a huge learning curve, helped by editors such as Clive Bernie and Todd Swift. Spoken word poets also pioneered the use of film clips. What I hope to do with The Book of Hours is to show how spoken word poetry can adapt and flourish in poetry film form. A ‘film’ can be more than a visual recording of me performing a poem, just as a ‘reading’ is more than me reading words from a book.

What I hope to do with The Book of Hours is to show how spoken word poetry can adapt and flourish in poetry film form. A ‘film’ can be more than a visual recording of me performing a poem, just as a ‘reading’ is more than me reading words from a book.

In the poetry for The Book of Hours I have tried to keep the immediacy of the voice as a central component. In most of the poems I am the speaker. I have used all my skills as performer to bring out the meaning and emotional quality of the words. I want my viewer to ‘hear’ the emotion behind the poem. I may not be the ‘person’ in the poem but I tried to inhabit their personality and situation. I hope that my viewer can hear the sadness of the mother whose grown up daughter has not stayed for long enough in ‘River Girl’

“When she’s gone I wash the plates. Do the laundry.
Her dress is on the floor. Crumpled in a corner.
A thrush on the steps breaks open a snail.” (English, 2016)

Or the desperation of another mother waiting for the bombs to stop, in ‘The Last Days.’

“Go to sleep little boy. Do not grow up
and learn to hate.” (English, 2016)

As the collection has developed the language of the poetry has become simpler. In the early poems such as ‘Weird Weather’ and ‘Aubade’ I have used detailed descriptions, which have been sensibly abandoned by the film makers. In Aubade, for example, the poems tells us

“I was still half asleep and involved in a dream
about going to Hay on Wye to buy shoes
which was actually a memory of
a pair of shoes I bought on impulse and then
didn’t wear them because they were too exquisite.
With pink leather flowers and wedge rope soles.” (English, 2016)

Matt Mullins, the film maker for this, has revealed none of these details. His film is of a woman’s hand stroking a bed. It shows us more about the woman’s feeling of isolation than her cluttered thoughts. I have learned to hold back. In ‘Quiet Sounds’ the descriptions are minimal.

“The kitchen clock marks time’s neat click.
I sneeze three times. A letter?
Four. Something better? A cow complains.
A crow caws back.”

The acclaimed film maker, Marie Craven, (Craven, 2017) created the visuals for this one. Through the use of creative commons images she constructed the world of the narrator. Her film shows us the inside of a cottage and glimpses of the landscape beyond. The film is tactile and sensuous, we can almost smell the bunch of lilac in the vase. She admits it was a bold decision to ‘illustrate’ the sounds mentioned in the poem, as much current poetry film creation offers an extra layer of interpretation to the poem rather than giving us visuals or sounds to the words. Her description of her process on her blog shows the care and attention poetry film makers dedicate to finding the right approach. Her final soundtrack is as detailed as a music score.

“The central element is the metronomic sound of a clock ticking. I edited Lucy’s voice in loose rhythm with the clock, elongating the pace of her reading and leaving spaces for the various other sounds to have their ‘solo’ moments: a pheasant and a wood pigeon, a sheep, a cow, an old fridge, air traffic. I carefully built up the soundtrack piece by piece until I had a complete first draft.” (2017)

The apparent simplicity of the final film belies our many conversations about how loud the noise of the cow should be, or the noise of the crows. I didn’t want these noises to dominate, I wanted them to suggest the background ‘soundtrack’ of life, which we only hear in quiet moments.

I do not think I have found a ‘formula’ for writing a poem for a poetry film … The words are only one element of a poetry film. How they are spoken, or read, and in what order and speed, and with what inflection or emphasis, and how these relate to the images or don’t relate to them, and what role the sound plays make up our final experience.

I feel I am still learning. I do not think I have found a ‘formula’ for writing a poem for a poetry film, nor do I want to. Each new poetry film is a new challenge, a new conversation with a new film maker, and even if I have worked with that film maker before each new film starts at the begining. I have learned to hold back and to give the poem space for the images and sounds to emerge and for the film not to be crowded out by the words. The words are only one element of a poetry film. How they are spoken, or read, and in what order and speed, and with what inflection or emphasis, and how these relate to the images or don’t relate to them, and what role the sound plays make up our final experience. When it works I can only describe it as a magical blending, like alchemy.


 

Lucy English is a novelist and spoken word poet. She has three novels published by Fourth Estate and her first collection of poetry was published by Burning Eye in 2014. She is Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University where she teaches performance poetry and fiction. As a poet Lucy has toured widely in the UK, US and South East Asia for the British Council. The Book of Hours is a film poetry collection made for her PhD in digital Writing.

 

 

Bibliography

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Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27588210

Beard, F., 2012. Francesca Beard. [Online]
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Birnie, C., 2012. Burning Eye Books. [Online]
Available at: https://burningeyebooks.wordpress.com/about/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Blonk, J., 2002. Jaap Blonk. [Online]
Available at: http://www.jaapblonk.com/
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Carmichael, G., 2010. SW collective. [Online]
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Cook, A., 2017. Filmpoem. [Online]
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[Accessed 2017].

Craven, M., 2017. Pixie Guts Blogspot. [Online]
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[Accessed 2017].

Emmanuel College, C., 2007. Fellow at Emmanuel College. [Online]
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[Accessed 24 July 2017].

English, L., 2014. Prayer to Imperfection: Poems 1996-2014. In: 1 ed. Portishead: Burning Eye Books, p. 105.

English, L., 2016. The Book of Hours. [Online]
Available at: http://thebookofhours.org/

Fay-Sallois, F., 2005. A Treasury of Hours. Los Angeles: Getty Publications.

Limbourg, B., n.d. labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures. [Online]
Available at: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures/

Moss, S., 2017. Wild Kingdom. Bringing Back Britain’s Wildlife.. London: Vintage.

Nationwide, 2016. Voice of the People. [Online]
Available at: http://www.nationwide.co.uk/about/media-centre-and-specialist-areas/media-centre/press-releases/archive/2016/9/14-voice-of-the-people
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Rainer Maria Rilke, B. D., 1941. In: Poems from the Book of Hours. New York: New Directions, p. 37.

Scott, J., 2011. Elizabeth Bishop Centenary. [Online]
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[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Silva, H., 2013. Hannah Silva. [Online]
Available at: http://hannahsilva.co.uk/about/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Silva, H., 2015. Signs of Poetry. [Online]
Available at: http://hannahsilva.co.uk/signs-of-poetry/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Smith, M., 2011. Marc Kelly Smith. [Online]
Available at: http://www.marckellysmith.net/about.html
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Society, T. P., 2009. Ted Hughes Award. [Online]
Available at: http://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/ted-hughes-award/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Swift, K., 2008. The Morville Hours. In: 1 ed. London: Bloosmbury, p. v111.

Tarlo, H., 2011. The Ground Aslant. Exeter: Shearsman Books Ltd..

 

 

Works Cited

BBC, 2011. BBC news. [Online]
Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-27588210

Beard, F., 2012. Francesca Beard. [Online]
Available at: http://www.francescabeard.com/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Birnie, C., 2012. Burning Eye Books. [Online]
Available at: https://burningeyebooks.wordpress.com/about/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Blonk, J., 2002. Jaap Blonk. [Online]
Available at: http://www.jaapblonk.com/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Carmichael, G., 2010. SW collective. [Online]
Available at: http://swcollective.co.uk/flash.html
[Accessed 24th July 2017].

Cook, A., 2017. Filmpoem. [Online]
Available at: http://filmpoem.com/about/
[Accessed 2017].

Craven, M., 2017. Pixie Guts Blogspot. [Online]
Available at: http://pixie-guts.blogspot.co.uk/
[Accessed 2017].

Emmanuel College, C., 2007. Fellow at Emmanuel College. [Online]
Available at: https://www.emma.cam.ac.uk/contact/fellows/?fellow=172
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

English, L., 2014. Prayer to Imperfection: Poems 1996-2014. In: 1 ed. Portishead: Burning Eye Books, p. 105.

English, L., 2016. The Book of Hours. [Online]
Available at: http://thebookofhours.org/

Fay-Sallois, F., 2005. A Treasury of Hours. Los Angeles: Getty Publications.

Limbourg, B., n.d. labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures. [Online]
Available at: http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/labors-of-the-months-from-the-tres-riches-heures/

Moss, S., 2017. Wild Kingdom. Bringing Back Britain’s Wildlife.. London: Vintage.

Nationwide, 2016. Voice of the People. [Online]
Available at: http://www.nationwide.co.uk/about/media-centre-and-specialist-areas/media-centre/press-releases/archive/2016/9/14-voice-of-the-people
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Rainer Maria Rilke, B. D., 1941. In: Poems from the Book of Hours. New York: New Directions, p. 37.

Scott, J., 2011. Elizabeth Bishop Centenary. [Online]
Available at: http://elizabethbishopcentenary.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/filmmaker-john-d-scott-shares.html
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Silva, H., 2013. Hannah Silva. [Online]
Available at: http://hannahsilva.co.uk/about/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Silva, H., 2015. Signs of Poetry. [Online]
Available at: http://hannahsilva.co.uk/signs-of-poetry/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Smith, M., 2011. Marc Kelly Smith. [Online]
Available at: http://www.marckellysmith.net/about.html
[Accessed 24th July 2017].

Society, T. P., 2009. Ted Hughes Award. [Online]
Available at: http://poetrysociety.org.uk/competitions/ted-hughes-award/
[Accessed 24 July 2017].

Swift, K., 2008. The Morville Hours. In: 1 ed. London: Bloosmbury, p. v111.

Tarlo, H., 2011. The Ground Aslant. Exeter: Shearsman Books Ltd..