Afraid So is a poem written by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and resonates a nihilistic tonality when being read. Later adapted into roughly a 2 minute video, the video uses snippets of stock footage in order to represent each line of the poem; visual poetry.

After watching this adaptation, I was fuelled with a desire to recreate something like this – although it strays from the coverage/decoupage of dialogue, it still involves the poignant nature of dialogue within film – and thus, it is a relevant and valid avenue to explore.

I have compiled a small library over the last year or so with video footage from random events such as camping trips, weekends away, and day to day life. This small archive may be able to help me with this task – once I either find/write the dialogue I would like to use.

Deliberation must be conducted as to whether a more ‘purist’ approach should be conducted in regards to remaining true to a poem – or whether I should experiment with a monologue. I feel as though a poem will remain more poignant and will allow for a more abstract approach. Thus, I have been looking at poems by Gwen Harwood, T.S. Elliot, Robert Frost and Mary Shelley. Additionally, I have been looking at lyrics from artists such as Radiohead and James Blake in order to gain inspiration.

Poems I have been looking at:

Estuary – Gwen Harwood

Wind crosshatches shallow water.
Paddocks rest in the sea’s arm.
Swamphens race through spiky grass.
A wire fence leans, a crazy stave
with sticks for barlines, wind for song.
Over use, interweaving light
with air and substance, ride the gulls.

Words in our undemanding speech
hover and blend with things observed.
Syllables flow in the tide’s pulse.
My earliest memory turns in air:
Eclipse. Cocks crow, as if at sunset;
Grandmother, holding a smoked glass,
says to me, ‘Look. Remember this.’

Over the goldbrown sand my children
run in the wind. The sky’s immense
with spring’s new radiance. Far from here,
lying close to the final darkness,
a great-grandmother lives and suffers,
still praising life: another morning
on earth, cockcrow and changing light.

Over the skeleton of thought
mind builds a skin of human texture.
The eye’s [art of another eye
that guides it through the maze of light.
A line becomes a firm horizon.
All’s as it was in the beginning.
Obscuring symbols melt away.

‘Remember this.’ I will remember
this quiet in which the questioning mind
allows reality to enter
its gateway as a friend, unchallenged,
to rest as a friend may, without speaking;
light falling like a benediction
on moments that renew the world.

Overgrown – James Blake

[Verse]
And I want you to know
I took it with me
That when things are thrown away like they are daily
Time passes and the constants stay

[Chorus]
So if that is how it is
I don’t wanna be a star
But a stone on the shore
A lone doorframe in a wall
When everything’s overgrown
But what she really really wanted was my rights and my wrongs
And I wouldn’t understand that I would try playing along

[Verse]
And I want you to know
I took it with me
That when things are thrown away like they are daily
Time passes and the constants stay

[Chorus]
So if that is how it is
I don’t wanna be a star
But a stone on the shore
A lone doorframe in a wall
When everything’s overgrown
But what she really really wanted was my rights and my wrongs
And I wouldn’t understand that I would try playing along
And I wouldn’t understand that I would try playing along
And I wouldn’t understand that I would try playing along

[Verse]
And I want you to know
I took it with me
That when things are thrown away like they are daily
Time passes and the constants stay
Time passes and the constants stay
Time passes and the constants stay
Time passes and the constants stay