3rd October National Poetry Day, The Arnolfini, Bristol Poetry Festival, 2013

Liberated Words is the home of the first annual international poetry film festival in the UK, celebrating poetry on screen in many forms, combining original and adapted written poems, with spoken word, images, music and other forms of sound effects. This is a burgeoning genre with a strong tie between music, text and image.

Founded by performance poet and novelist Lucy English (Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University) and Sarah Tremlett – media poet and arts writer (PhD on media poetry at The University of the Arts, London), Liberated Words began as part of Bath Spa University’s MIX Conference, at Corsham Court, 2012 in order to bring poetry film to the general public.

Liberated Words has been invited by Colin Brown of Poetry Can to present a one day event as part of Bristol Poetry Festival on October 3rd.

At the Liberated Words Poetry Film festival there are international screenings from our partners VideoBardo in Buenos Aires and Visible Verse in Vancouver, and talks from TS Eliot prize-winning poet Philip Gross, award-winning, Bristol-based film-maker Joe Magee, animator Professor Suzie Hanna, poet David Johnson, media artist Professor Martin Rieser, and community media artist Jackie Calderwood.

This year we are presenting the finalists from two competitions – ‘Liberated Words open competition’ and ‘4 x 4’, which features new work created by an international selection of poets and filmmakers. We also have a ‘Spotlight’ section including acclaimed practitioners Tom Konyves, Machine Libertine and Jani Sipila.

For further information on Liberated Words please visit our website.

Putting the la into LA and Bristol!

We are inaugurating two awards — the best music /sound award and the best edited award. We are delighted to announce that our music judges will be LA-based spoken- word poet Rich Ferguson and film maker Mark Wilkinson — whose teamwork produced the memorable music-based poetry film Human Condition.

Dates and times:

The Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival will run from 10am-9pm on October 3rd.

The daytime session costs £5.00/ £3.00; the evening session costs £5.00/£3.00 and an all day ticket costs £8.00/£4.00. For further information on how to book a ticket, go to www.poetrycan.co.uk, e-mail boxoffice@arnolfini.org.uk or telephone 0117 917 2300.

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Lucy English

Lucy English is a spoken word poet, poetry filmmaker and novelist. She is Professor of Creative Enterprise and The Spoken Word at Bath Spa University and has a PhD on spoken word in poetry film. She has three novels published by Fourth Estate and two collections of poetry published by Burning Eye Books.  Her 2018 online poetry film project The Book of Hours was shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize. She was co-editor and writer of Spoken Word in the UK published by Routledge in 2021. Lucy is the co-organiser of the Mix Digital conferences at Bath Spa University and co-director of Lyra, The Bristol Poetry Festival. Her most recent project, ‘Cancer Alley‘, a poetry film hologram installation created with Outlier Moving Pictures, was screened at The Watershed in Bristol in April 2024.

www.knibbworld.com/lucy/

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