An online library of poems from the Scottish Poetry Library.
(after Marina Abramović) I dug all night in the companyof moths – drawn from the darkto the bright beam of my torch –recovering first his skull, last,the phalanges of his toes.Finally, at dawn, my bag full,I carried my husband home. I laid his bones, damp and coldfrom the grave, on a rugby the fire; then […]
Only at night, the noisy nursery wakes:the mothers who’ve taken over the spacein the roof returning from insect-gatheringflights. I can hear the flutteras they squeeze in under the eaves,the twittering, chirruping, squeaking,of milk-sucking, carnivorous throats.In the day, you wouldn’t know they were there,except for a smell, made up of bits of smellsI thought I’d forgotten […]
Wondering how a good woman can murder~I enter the tent of Holofernes,holding in one hand his long oiled hairand in the other, raised abovehis sleeping, wine-flushed facehis falchion with its unsheathedcurved blade. And I feel a rushof tenderness, a longingto put down my weapon, to liesheltered and safe in a warrior’sfumy sweat, under the emerald […]
When all the water had run from her mouth,and I’d rubbed her arms and legs,and chest and belly and back,with clumps of dried moss;and I’d put her to sleep in a nest of grass,and spread her dripping clothes on a bush,and held her again – her heat passinginto my breast and shoulder,the breath I couldn’t […]
I used to iron everything:my iron flying over sheets and towelslike a sledge chased by wolves over snow, the flex twisting and crinkinguntil the sheath frayed, exposingwires like nerves. I stood like a horse with a smoking hoof,inviting anyone who daredto lie on my silver-padded board, to be pressed to the thinnessof dolls cut from […]
Filmpoem 26/ The Forty Elephants from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. The Forty Elephants is a new short film, conceived and directed by Alastair Cook with cinematography by James Norton. The Forty Elephants is developed around a narrative commissioned by Alastair, written and read by Gérard Rudolf. The Forty Elephants was shortlisted for the Aesthetica Film […]
Tipsy Tapsy from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. Tipsy Tapsy is a film by artist Alastair Cook for R M Hubbert’s eponymous track. This film is the winning entry for the Edinburgh International Film Festival (edfilmfest.org.uk/) and tentracks.co.uk Music Pictures, culminating in ten bands playing infront of ten new films. Music Pictures is at the Festival House @Teviot, […]
Not In My Name/ 1787 from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. The third in a series of twelve films by Alastair Cook for Kevin Williamson’s project, Not In My Name, with a commissioned soundtrack by composer Luca Nasciuti. Not In My Name was performed at the 2011 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at the National Library of Scotland. […]
Filmpoem 27/ Field Notes from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. Field Notes is a landscape incantation, a morning breath. Directed by Alastair Cook, written and narrated by poet and publisher Colin Will, with a commissioned soundtrack from composer Luca Nasciuti, Field Notes premiered at the Alchemy Film Festival on 22nd October 2011.
Filmpoem 13/ Philosophy from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. Philosophy is a poem by poet and boater Jo Bell; she is also the Director of National Poetry Day. Alastair notes: “It’s been swirling around my head all summer, while baby Rose has been born and grown; Philosophy is a joy, bright and full of life, bursting.It […]
Filmpoem 14/ Mothlight from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. Mothlight is a film of Janette Ayachi’s poem, which she wrote after watching James Stanley Brakhage’s film Mothlight, a film shot on single 8 and hand edited in 1963, a “found foliage” film composed of insects, leaves, and other detritus sandwiched between two strips of perforated tape. […]
Filmpoem 15/ Slow Wave from Alastair Cook on Vimeo. Slow Wave Through The City is a poem by Jacq Kelly, published by Colin Herd this year. It crossed my path digitally and I watched the film in my head as I read, my adopted city of Edinburgh speeding by. Jacq lives in Edinburgh but dreams […]
