Filmpoem 42 / Grand Union Bridge

Ian Duhig’s Grand Union Bridge returns to Paddington Basin, and the ‘old black canal’ of the poet’s adolescence. “I wanted my poem for Alastair’s film to suggest a place of transgressive glamour, including glamour in its own magical sense; a place where lines were crossed, even between the living and the dead,” says Duhig, who draws on references from 1950s crime movie The Blue Lamp and the Irish mythical otherworld Tir na Nog.

Grand Union Bridge is a poem by Ian Duhig; this film is a Filmpoem production for the Poetry Society in partnership with the Canal and River Trust as part of the Canal Laureate 2013 project.

Grand Union Bridge was screened in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank on 3rd October 2013, National Poetry Day. It has also been screened in 2014 at the Cork Poetry Festival and StAnza, the Scottish Poetry Festival.