[New-Poetry] optical nerve

[Anny Ballardini]

short videos, it takes some time to download them:
http://www.opticnerve.co.uk/ModernAmericanPoets.htm

and:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Colin Still"
Sent: Thursday, September 14, 2006 10:41 PM
Subject: my William Blake video at Leadenhall Market this weekend....


Hi!

A brief note to draw your attention to the fact that my modest little film 
'Companion of Angels: A Celebration of William Blake' will be shown 
throughout both days of Open House Weekend - ie: this coming Saturday & 
Sunday - outside The Lamb public house in Leadenhall Market; it will run 
continuously from 10.00 until 5.00, with me in attendance to press the 
'start' button....


COMPANION OF ANGELS

A CELEBRATION OF WILLIAM BLAKE

 The piece started out as an evocation of Bunhill ('bone-hill') Fields, the 
Dissenters' burial ground on the City's northern boundary. This haunting 
spot, which I had always (wrongly, it seems) believed to be the site of a 
plague pit, is where four great writers are buried: the visionary poet & 
painter William Blake, Daniel Defoe, author of  'Moll Flanders',  'Robinson 
Crusoe' & 'A Journal of the Plague Year', John Bunyan, writer of 'The 
Pilgrim's Progress' & 'Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners', &, almost 
forgotten, it seems, the seventeenth century hymnodist Isaac Watts.

 As the film developed, my interests became increasingly focused on Blake, 
from whose poems & correspondence I assembled a verbal collage, which is 
here read in a canon-like fashion by myself & by the poets Charles 
Bainbridge & David Chaloner.
<...>

Whilst, as the work progressed, Bunyan & Defoe gradually slipped out of the 
picture, Isaac Watts remained a constant presence, heard here on the 
soundtrack in a series of variations on three of his most famous hymn tunes: 
'When I Survey the Wondrous Cross',  'Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun' & 
'O God, Our Help in Ages Past'. These have been skilfully arranged by the 
composer Paul Archbold, & are performed by the viola player Bridget Carey & 
the virtuoso cellist Neil Heyde, whose improvisations are featured 
extensively. Visually the piece draws on Bunhill Fields, on images of the 
modern city & glimpses of stained glass windows in three City churches. To 
give it an hallucinatory quality the footage was shot at extreme shutter 
speeds, either at a third of a second, creating semi-abstract washes of 
colour, or at a 10,000th of a second, piling images on at the rate of 
twenty-five per second.

 The maps which appear in the opening section are from Christopher & John 
Greenwood's 'Map of London from an Actual Survey' of 1827. This atlas, 
published in the year of the poet's death, offers a precise cartographical 
record of the city in which Blake spent all but three years of his life & in 
which he felt so deeply rooted. 'I can alone carry on my visionary studies 
in London unannoy'd', he wrote: 'I may converse with my friends in Eternity, 
Dream Dreams & speak Parables.'

It's still very much 'work in progress', but come if you can....

COLIN

OPTIC NERVE
www.opticnerve.co.uk



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anny Ballardini
http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star! 
Friedrich Nietzsche 
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