Jane Glennie
I have admired the work of Jane Glennie for a long time. Jane's poetry films have screened at festivals across the world and have won many accolades and awards. The films she creates are composed of what she describes as a ‘blizzard’ of still photographs. These intricately weaved blizzards result in textures and layers of extraordinary depth.
Jane uses her background as a typographer to add a further unique edge to her work:
I am interested in the detailed structuring of a text - working out the hierarchy and the relative emphasis to give meaning through the layout, font choice, spacing and white space. To articulate in speech is the action of putting into words an idea or feeling and this action comes with gestures, pauses and vocal and facial expression. The act of articulating a text gives written words visual cues to the ideas or feeling contained within. As an artist I see my work as an articulation of things. - Jane Glennie
Further thoughts on using text in poetry film formed part of our In Conversation series and can be found here.
Fear & yearning series
Fear & yearning is a series of films that Jane created with Toby Martinez de las Rivas and Neda Milenova Mirova. The sequence consiste of five films: Vloeiweide, Psalm-for-the-sea,
​Night, Gethsemane and ​Little psalm. Fear & Yearning began as an engagement with the photographic archive of Eric Guy (held at the Museum of English Rural Life) by poet Toby Martinez de las Rivas. The texts originally published in Floodmeadow by Toby Martinez de las Rivas (Faber, 2023).
Gethsemane
The tone and contrast in Gethsemane achieves something deeply expressive and dark. At one point, against images of a mounted huntsman, a pack of dogs, fallen petals, dead leaves and grass, you'll hear a faltering voice: ‘where the sparrowhawk digs its beak in the crop’ (Martinez de las Rivas). The pace of the images and sound are also synchronised in a varied and intriguing way.
Dark
A world of humans are plunged into darkness and forced to journey into the fear of their true selves mirrored back to them in black - only to find occasional moments of strange relief amidst the beauty of nothingness. - Jane Glennie
Because Goddess is Never Enough
Click here for a captioned version of the film.
A poetry film by Jane Glennie & Rosie Garland inspired by dancer Tilly Losch.
Blue Blue Flash
‘Blue Flash Flash’ illustrates a poem by Julia Bird (published in Twenty-four seven Blossom, Salt Publishing, 2013). "Poem to be Read on One Breath: Blue" describes the moment in a child's life in which they learn a new word - octopus - and their neurons act to lock down the knowledge forever.
Voice by Robert Glennie
Jane Glennie
https://www.janeglennie.co.uk/
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