Poet: Jane Glennie

Being & being empty by Jane Glennie

27 January, 2018 by Dave Bonta - 2 Comments - Posted in Author-made videopoems
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Here’s UK artist and typographer Jane Glennie‘s latest filmpoem, which she introduces on Vimeo as follows:

How to be a mother … who is this being that I am? Wanting to be half-full with the joy of play, a job well done, and the softness of a bed to sink into at the end. Feeling half-empty with a busy brain that won’t shut down and twitches into awakening too early. Feeling overwhelmed by the chores and feeling rubbish as a result because surely that’s really not important. Tossing and turning and struggling to make a zingy start to each new day.

It’s amazing how hard a skilled poetry filmmaker like Glennie can make 37 seconds work. The effect of an enervated, over-active brain is not merely communicated but, one feels, directly represented. Brava!

Channel Swimmer by Jane Glennie

22 June, 2017 by Dave Bonta - 1 Comment - Posted in Author-made videopoems
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This author-made videopoem by British artist Jane Glennie was recently featured at Atticus Review. It’s kind of high-concept, but I think it works. Here’s the description from AR and Vimeo:

Channel Swimmer is a short ‘flicker’ film that examines repetitive and ambivalent relationships in matriarchal cycles through the generations from mother to daughter to mother. The film is inspired by two novels – ‘A Proper Marriage’ by Doris Lessing and ‘National Velvet’ by Enid Bagnold, and their main characters. Martha Quest in ‘A Proper Marriage’ is having her own child and questions the relationship between herself and her mother. While Velvet Brown is quietly encouraged by her mother (who is the ‘Channel Swimmer’ of the title – as those who swim the English Channel to France are known) in ‘National Velvet’, the climax of which is when the protagonist wins the famous Grand National steeplechase. The words in the soundtrack are collaged from these two books. The film is made from hundreds of original photographs taken on location on a racecourse and in the studio.

Atticus Review, incidentally, unveiled a spiffy new site design a month or two back, and the editors are always looking for good mixed media submissions. Be sure to bookmark and check the site regularly.

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