Hi all, my partner, Zahra and I responded to the poem “The Earth Shakes” by Steve Stanfield. This post will include the poem we responded to, the film I made in response to the poem and and poem I made in response to Zahra’s film.
Initial Poem
[The earth shakes]
BY STEVE SANFIELD
The earth shakes
just enough
to remind us.
Video Response
link to youtube below. The video is called “to remind us to notice”
https://youtu.be/2PBgxbFho58
Poem Response to Zahra’s film
I have included an image and a text version, just in case the image is too difficult to read. Blackout poem using the first two pages of Song for the Blue Ocean by Carl Safina. Titled: a relationship with the ocean.
I stood,
I watch
slowly circling the
void upon the waters.
The eternal sea.
molten glass
seemed to meld
into blue night,
the sun a moist watercolour
freshly created and laden with
power
the sea
breathing gently on my lover’s chest
the atmosphere a curtain around
planet Ocean
my eye was a faint molten sea,
the surface like a suspended moment
backlit from another world.
The tear it left was
emerald and wild
plummeting
through
a watery jungle
we examine the surface
while the ocean may look
for millennia
This poem is in response to Meghan’s video (attached) based on the poem “The Earth Shakes”
entirely too placid—i’d spend hours trying to catch your gaze. call me asinine, call me puerile, hell, call me down right foolish. i’ve spent days floating, mind wandering. all i can do is day dream.
picture this; it’s summer and we’re at the beach. the sand grains make a home between our toes and the salted air belts through our hair, twisting and turning—-and god, is that fucking yearning, too? the sweetness of the sea kisses us when we enter it. how does it feel? never mind, the answer is written on your face.
what do you think of when you hear the word ‘peaceful?’
my mum always answers with the same thing; the sound of birds chirping in the early morning. my dad says a thunderstorm on a particularly miserable day.
you told me it was the cabin your family owns; tucked away in a tiny corner of the woods. the lights don’t work and it’s always splintered with a chill in the air. you told me it’s the one place you don’t feel lonely, and i think i understand that feeling.
me, though? i think of you.
you are the tranquil waters on a small lake—the first drops of rain from the overcast sky.
i’ve never known the embodiment of serene before. i’ve known angry words and fist fights, bloodied noses and bruises.
i’ve known silence—and it was deafening.
it’s not with you.
Group: B (make an audio visual based on a poem, then write a response – poem or 400 word prose – based on the partner’s audiovisual from the response of a poem)
NOTE: Just realised that whilst many chose the same poem to do this, we interpreted that we both do a DIFFERENT one…so either way uhhhhhhhhh….just roll with what we got? 🤷🏻♀️
Over my face that wraps up my identity, my feelings
Obscuring the body I see, the body that I materialise
from sight, I feel constricted, the pressure in my head twofolding with the adhesion of more tape
How do I get a handle on this?
Where I once saw the reflection of myself, I now see a glamour of blue
No shape or silhouette.
Sometimes I barely see at all.
Will you please stop blinding me? Will I stop blinding me?
Fireflies (Nathan Fumberger)
Prompt: Blizzard (William Carlos Williams)
Response (Hayden Andipas)
The Furious static fills my head. It tells me to move, go forward,
writhe in silent anger and let the static be your lens.
And then, the light.
At first I saw a solitary glow, just out of reach it floats idly. With no
expectation or purpose the light grows. At first a silent whisper it
builds and grows, bigger, brighter more intense. The light multiplies
its green, blue single then numerous. How long has it been now? A
second or an eternity, it doesn’t matter.
It cuts the static penumbra and brings with it something new…
Hope? Maybe.
And then, as quickly as it began it is gone…
What does the world look like now after the light? I see nothing but
the path ahead of me, lit by the sun and carrying with it something,
something, something.
Perhaps I was never meant to know where the path leads.
Green Matter (Greta Egan)
Prompt: Earth Shakes
Response (Nathan Fumberger)
The emergency was known to the trees.
Acolytes of an old god stood in judgement;
Silent, recording sins on every inch of themselves.
We were a threat to them – we twisted them,
cut, burnt, and bruised them.
Slept in their bones, as they watched us remain.
The climate was felt by the birds.
They were the messengers, the seekers, the remnants
of an old desire to touch the sun, now to fade behind it.
We wielded blades, loved, birthed and named as
we desired – war, blood, extinction.
Paradise, paved by burnt feathers.
The action was begun by the clouds.
Change in the air, the breath of the world
arresting, exhaling, holding, choking.
We saw the gates close to us – our armies
starving and rusted.
Survival watched us stand on our wasteland.
The emergency gripped the world.
Once temples, now threats, the trees
hid the monsters that grew from their blood.
We picked the stones that rained
like fire from the sky and filled them
with coal dust and anger.
The extinction was upon us at last.
The bones, the stars, the land lays cold:
all screaming for our action.
We could not change, return their bones
or their feathers, nor our fear a heartbeat.
Our broken weapons promised our survival.
Bang!
The gunshot rings out – shattering the silence – people startle, look, buzzing like bees as the hive is disturbed –
The body falls.
Red blooms on white sand.
Aiiieee!
The scream rings out – shattering the silence – people startle, scream as well, run like deer as the herd discovers danger in their midst –
The body lies still.
The red sand dries.
The Blind Woman Smiles.
(She smiles and her mouth is the grinning teeth of a skull, her dark sunglasses are the eye holes, her skin bone. Death turns, and walks away.)
