Celebrating World Poetry Day With 5 Films From inVERSE

I may have completely spaced and missed world poetry day which I am really mad about since you know how much I love poetry but I do have some exciting poetry news to share with you today...

Launching on World Poetry Day on Sunday 21^st March 2021, inVERSE is a collection of five of the world’s oldest surviving poems, re-imagined for the 21^st century through the medium of film. Filmed during lockdown 2020, the inVerse series is the brainchild of BAFTA nominated film maker Jack Jewers – the film director behind the award-winning adaptations of CJ Daugherty’s bestselling Night School series, published by Little Brown. The inVerse series also features narration from Adam Roche, host of the Secret History of Hollywood podcast.

Each short film takes a historical poem, ranging from 15,000 BC to 1,000 AD, as a prism through which to explore our modern world. Far from being dry, remote echoes of a long-gone age, each poem chosen for the collection feels like it could have been written yesterday, offering new meaning and a fresh perspective on some of the key global issues we face today.

Far from being dry, remote echoes of a long-gone age, each poem chosen for the collection feels like it could have been written yesterday. And why shouldn’t they? People are people. Our dreams are nothing new. Our ancestors had the same hopes and fears that we do. And if we can understand this, perhaps it helps to put some of the problems of our modern world into perspective.  

The five films being released to mark World Poetry Day on Sunday 21st March are: 

• Love Song -  An Egyptian love poem written in 1400 BCE reveals a meditation on the meaning of relationship and gender in 2021.  

• Long Wall - A poem about loss and suffering from the Han Dynasty in China, opens up a conversation about Europe’s refugee crisis. 

• My Heart - Originating from ancient Mesopotamia, “My Heart Flutters Hastily” is a delightful reminder that those giddy, dizzy feelings you can get when you really like somebody are nothing new. 

• The Look - A first century poem taken from Ovid’s Ars Amarosa is reimagined as a celebration of inclusivity and tolerance.

• The Dawn - The ancient Indian poet Kālidāsa’s Salutation to the Dawn transforms into a rallying cry for a better tomorrow led by young street protestors. 

All five of the films are available free to watch via the inverse website inversefilm.uk.

ABOUT THE FILMS

Love Song

Based on the poem The Flower Song Anon. Egypt, c.1400 BCE. (Abridged).

Watch here: https://inversefilm.uk/watch/love-song 

A timeless declaration of love and desire, this poem feels as fresh today as it did when it was written – a long, long time ago. The imagery is strikingly sensual; how the narrator describes the sound of their true love’s voice as being like the taste of sweet wine; or wishing they were her very her clothes, so that they could forever be close to her body. It’s passionate, erotic, and quite beautiful

Production Notes: None of the couples you see in the film had met before they came into the studio on the bright, spring day on which it was filmed – with one exception. The older couple are Alfred and Leila Hoffman, who were 92 and 83 at the time of filming, who have been together for over 60 years. The velvet-voiced narration is provided by Adam Roche, host of the Secret History of Hollywood podcast – required listening for all classic movie fans.

 

Long Wall

Based on the poem He Waters His Horse By A Breach in the Long Wall Anon. China, c.120 BCE

Watch here: https://inversefilm.uk/watch/long-wall 

Jack Jewers says: The first time I read this anonymous poem – dating from the Han Dynasty in China, sometime around 120BCE – I was blown away by its age. How can a poem this rich and vivid be so old? The idea for this whole series of films grew from there. The poem conveys such poignant feelings of separation and loss that it seemed to be perfectly suited to a tale of refugees, far from home.

Production Notes: The refugee crisis is close to actress Sophia Eleni’s heart. Her mother fled the war in Cyprus in the mid-1970s, Most of the footage that ends the film was donated by the charity Refugee Rescue, who undertake tireless work saving desperate people at sea.

 

My Heart

Based on the poem My Heart Flutters Hastily Anon. Mesopotamia, c.1500 BCE

Watch here: https://inversefilm.uk/watch/my-heart 

Originating from ancient Mesopotamia, “My Heart Flutters Hastily” is a delightful reminder that those giddy, dizzy feelings you can get when you really like somebody are nothing new. Whether it’s in a world of dating apps and socially-distanced love, or from a time that feels unimaginably distant, people have been falling in love the same way forever.

Production Notes: inVERSE started life in a world before anyone had ever heard the word ‘Covid’ and lockdown was something to do with home security. So when the world ground to a half in the spring of 2020, Jack had to find alternative ways of finishing the project. Working with Los Angeles-based actress Joanne Chew, Jack devised a method of directing over Zoom while she recorded the takes on her phone, as selfies. The result is the lightest of the five films, and the sweetest.

 

The Look 

Based on the poem Take Care With How You Look from Ars Amarosa by Ovid. Italy, 1st Century CE.  (Abridged).

Watch here: https://inversefilm.uk/watch/the-look 

The Romans knew how to have a good time. The Look is an abridged version of ‘Take Care With How You Look,’ a chapter from Ars Amarosa (“The Art of Love”), by the poet Ovid. Its themes of rejecting false nostalgia about the past, and embracing the richness of the modern age, sounded to me like a celebration of inclusivity and tolerance. Of course, Ovid was writing about a very different age to our own, but the message holds as true today as it always has been. And what more fabulous harbingers this message than Drag Queens United?

Production Notes: This is the only INSIGHT short that was put together from found footage, rather than filmed specially for the series. The lovely, colourful, joyous shots of Drag Queens United were taken at Amsterdam Pride in 2017.

 

The Dawn

Based on the poem Salutation to the Dawn by Kālidāsa (attributed) - India, c.400 CE

Watch here: https://inversefilm.uk/watch/the-dawn 

Considered the greatest poet of ancient India, Kālidāsa is a founding figure of world literature. And yet, a lot of mystery surrounds Kālidāsa. Some scholars even question whether he was a real person, suggesting instead that his work a kind of collected greatest hits of the ancient Sanskrit world. And perhaps it's appropriate that such an inspiring poem was written by a semi-mythical figure. It sounds to me like a rallying cry for a better tomorrow. And who better to get that across than young street protestors?

Production Notes: ‘Bullet time’ is an effect that makes objects and people look like they are frozen in thin air. Creating true bullet time requires two things we did not have – time and money. So instead, Jack took a low-fi approach. Aside from a few simple computer-generated touches to enhance the overall effect, everything you see is done for real. The protestors are all professional dancers, who had the strength and balance necessary to be able to keep still for extended periods of time – often in difficult and uncomfortable poses.

ABOUT THE POEMS 

The five poems that the have been reimagined for a 21st century audience are: 

• The Flower Song  Anon. Egypt, c.1400 BCE. (Abridged).

• He Waters His Horse By A Breach in the Long Wall Anon. China, c.120 BCE

• My Heart Flutters Hastily Anon. Mesopotamia, c.1500 BCE

• Take Care With How You Look from Ars Amarosa by Ovid. Italy, 1st Century CE.  (Abridged).

• Salutation to the Dawn by Kālidāsa (attributed) - India, c.400 CE

You can read all five poems on the inverse website here: https://inversefilm.uk/the-poems 

ABOUT JACK JEWERS 

Jack Jewers is a filmmaker and writer. Passionate about telling stories in all media, his body of work crosses film, TV, and digital. His short films and web series have been shown in and out of competition at dozens of film and web festivals, including Cannes, New York, Washington D.C., Marseille, Dublin, and London’s FrightFest.

In 2014 he developed and directed Night School, a web series based on the popular young adult novels of the same name. It quickly grew from a couple of low-budget short films to become one of the highest-profile British web series to date. Jack’s numerous short films as director include the critically-acclaimed Shalom Kabul, a dark comedy based on the true story of the last two Jews of Afghanistan. 

Jack has won several accolades for his film work, including an award from the Royal Television Society and a nomination for Best Short Film by BAFTA Wales. He has been invited to speak about his work at several major film and TV industry events, including Series Mania in Paris. Jack has also worked in advertising.

Through his production company, Queen Anne’s Revenge, Jack is currently in development on the fantasy TV series Whatever After, featuring Jessica Brown Findlay. He is also working on a small slate of feature film projects, including a thriller set in the international protest movement, entitled Generation Revolution. 

Away from the cinema in all its forms, Jack has a deep interest in literature and history. He writes historical fiction, and is the co-founder of the publishing company Moonflower Books. 

He lives near London with his wife, the author Christi Daugherty, a small menagerie of pets, and a friendly ghost. But that’s another story. 

Review: Coffee Days Whiskey Nights by Cyrus Parker

A lot can happen between the first sip of coffee and the last taste of whiskey, and this book takes a look at the way a single day can change our outlook on everything from relationships with others, to our relationships with ourselves, and everything in between. Ultimately, coffee days, whiskey nights illustrates that no matter how hopeless we may feel at the end of the day, a new one is only a few hours away.

Review: I always love some Cyrus Parker poetry. I adored Dropkick Romance but this new collection has quickly become my favourite. I read this copy thanks to netgalley but have pre-ordered a physical copy because I love those illustrations and being able to revisit favourite poems easily. Having said that I did still get to experience the beauty of having the morning/coffee poems on white pages and night/whiskey poems in white text on black.

I also have a fondness for this collection because of the title and the format. I really feel what this writer was going for with the day and night concept but also I love coffee and whiskey and also consume a lot of it so I can appreciate these poems on that level too. 

Some of the poems that I connected with most were those concerning anxiety and also those concerning the little pleasures in life. I really felt those poems in my soul and I loved the way they were worded. Cyrus Parker reminds us to ‘post that photo of your pumpkin spice latte, do all of the things that make you happy and share each one of them with the world because we could all use a little more joy in our lives’ and I love that. 

I really recommend this book and I can’t wait to fully explore the physical copy soon!

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

Review: Break Your Glass Slippers by Amanda Lovelace

"more forgetting time.

more midnight dances with yourself."

amanda lovelace, the bestselling & award-winning author of the “women are some kind of magic” poetry series, presents a new companion series, “you are your own fairy tale” the first installment, break your glass slippers, is about overcoming those who don’t see your worth, even if that person is sometimes yourself. in the epic tale of your life, you are the most important character while everyone is but a forgotten footnote. even the prince.

Review: I feel like I had waited for this book forever but let me tell you... it was worth the wait. I stormed my way through the pages. This book is beautifully structured and just so thoughtfully illustrated. As soon as I finished I turned back to the beginning to read it again just so I could take in how well each of the illustrations fit with each of the pages. 

This is a Cinderella retelling only this time we have a storyteller telling us one thing and a fairy godmother telling us something else. I really liked the way there was this almost dialogue going through the book and the person telling us the story and the fairy godmother has a lot to say about society and identity. This book also says a lot about fairytales and the way little girls are brought up with the princesses and little boys are brought up with the prince charmings and the damage that can cause and the troubling images those ideals can project. 

I loved what this collection of poems had to say about female friendship, about identity and body image. I also liked how it touched on how society reacts when women stand up for themselves both publicly and privately. Amanda Lovelace is a fellow book lover and this always comes across in her poems and in her books in general and this is true of this collection as well. I love what she has to say about books and coffee and I love the way she has taken the fairytales that we all grew up reading/having read to us and changed the narrative to reflect the world we live in today. 

I really recommend this poetry collection and I think the message of self-care in all its forms is especially pertinent today. (This book was published in March 2020)

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

Blog Tour: Review of Fairy Rock by Stephen Watt

Today is my stop on the blog tour for Fairy Rock by Stephen Watt and I have a review to share with you. If you like the sound of that, there's more information about the author and a buy link at the bottom of this post. Don't forget to check out the other stops on the tour for more exclusive content and reviews!

Here's what it's all about...

In 2017 Andrew Smith, then Director, now Chair of the Scottish Writers’ Centre, came up with a dynamic idea to run a Twitter campaign inviting poets to pitch an idea and the winner would have a poetry pamphlet published by the SWC’s publisher partner, Red Squirrel Press. Poet, critic, essayist, editor, designer and typesetter Gerry Cambridge, poet Sheila Templeton, writer, musician and Editor of both Postbox Press (the literary fiction imprint of Red Squirrel Press) and Postbox International Short Story Magazine, Colin Will, and myself took part in a panel at the SWC, ‘How to get published’ in October 2017. Andrew received many entries, a shortlist was drawn up, Stephen Watt subsequently won and persuaded me to publish a full-length collection.

— Sheila Wakefield, Founding Editor, Red Squirrel Press

Glasgow is correctly lauded for its wonderful characters and hospitality but at the turn of the Millennium it was dubbed the ‘Murder Capital of Europe’ with sectarian divisions and organised crime rife in the city. Four of its natives have been raised around the city’s Bridgeton area, cultivated by its ill-omened beliefs, and now have to separately find a way to subsist. But one crime family firmly believes in the tradition of torture and a novel way of disposing of its detractors. Who will emerge smelling of roses—or end up pushing the roses up from the earth below?

Review: It was so interesting to read a crime novel set in verse. I love reading poetry, especially modern poetry and so this was such a refreshing read for me. We get snippets of the characters in this book through individual poems and then move back and forth between the narrative and the characters are the book progresses. 

I am always saying that I want to read more books set in Glasgow and so this was wonderful for me because it was set among streets and buildings I could recognise and I could really place myself there. If you haven't been to Glasgow, not to worry, everything is described so vividly, you will feel like you have by the time you;re done. 

This book does contain a lot of violence and violence in ways you can't even imagine violence being. Because this book is written in verse though it does seem to take the edge off somehow. You get distracted by the poetic language and the figurative sentences and so don't notice the extreme gore and the truly terrible death. 

I loved reading this authors writing, his descriptions were really vivid and even when gory, they were beautiful. If you feel like you can stomach it and you want something just that little bit different then I do recommend this one to you. 

About the Author

Stephen Watt was born in the Vale of Leven in 1979. His awards include first prize in the Poetry Rivals Slam, the StAnza International Digital Poetry Slam, and the Tartan Treasures award. Notable collections which he has curated include the Joe Strummer Foundation collection Ashes To Activists (2018) and the James Watt bicentenary booklet Horsepower (2019). He is Dumbarton Football Club’s Poet-in-Residence and was appointed the Makar for the Federation of Writers (Scotland) in 2019. He lives in Dumbarton with his wife Keriann and pug Beanz.

Buy Link 

https://www.redsquirrelpress.com/product-page/fairy-rock-stephen-watt  

@StephenWattSpit 

 @RedSquirrelPres

@LoveBooksGroup 

Review: To Drink Coffee with a Ghost by Amanda Lovelace

"You cannot have a funeral for your mother without also having a funeral for yourself."  This book poses the ever-lingering question: What happens when someone dies before they're able to redeem themselves?

From the bestselling & award-winning poetess, amanda lovelace, comes the finale of her illustrated duology, "things that h(a)unt." In the first installment, to make monsters out of girls,  lovelace explored the memory of being in a toxic romantic relationship. In to drink coffee with a ghost, lovelace unravels the memory of the complicated relationship she had with her now-deceased mother.

Review: I love Amanda Lovelace's poetry and have loved her previous collections so of course I was excited to read this collection. I loved this one just as much as the others. It delves into some different topics and some darker issues than some of her others. This is part 2 of the Things That Haunt duology and this duet is definitely a little more hard hitting than the Women Are Some Kind of Magic Series. I like the distinction between the two but all of her books comes with trigger warnings in the very front so make sure you practise self care when choosing whether or not to pick this one up. 

Not only does this book have awesome poetry but that poetry is dressed beautifully with a wicked cover and some beautiful illustrations inside, some of them are just stunning and go so well with the poems they're with its just brilliant. I always read these books in one sitting marking off my favourites to go back to a re-read again. 

Some of my favourites in this collection include; I've Always Been Whole on My Own; How To Say I Love You ii; We're The Only Thing That Matters and You're Never Truly Alone With a Book. I so enjoyed carving out some 'me time' to sit down and devour these poems and I recommend all of Amanda Lovelace's work. 

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

Review: The Mermaid's Voice Returns in This One by Amanda Lovelace

Goodreads Choice Award-winning poet and USA TODAY bestselling author Amanda Lovelace presents the mermaid’s voice returns in this one — the third and final installment in her “women are some kind of magic” series, featuring a foreword from Lang Leav and 13 guest poems from leading voices in poetry such as Nikita Gill, KY Robinson, and Orion Carloto.

The mermaid is known for her siren song, luring bedroom-eyed sailors to their demise. However, beneath these misguided myths are tales of escapism and healing, which Lovelace weaves throughout this empowering collection of poetry, taking you on a journey from the sea to the stars. They tried to silence her once and for all, but the mermaid’s voice returns in this one.

Review: I absolutely loved the final instalment in the Women are Some Kind of Magic series. Having so enjoyed the previous collections of Amanda's poetry, there was a lot of pressure to love this one and I absolutely did. It felt like a crescendo at the end of a song and that is absolutely how I needed it to feel. 

This book comes with the same kind of care warnings as the previous books and the author notes these at the start of this book. This book also comes with space to start your open poems and stories in the same vain, which Amanda's previous book also had and I love that idea. I know there is also a whole journal out with space for your own poems but having something at the end of a book like this, at the end of a book where I have flagged countless poems to return to-such an amazing idea. 

I love the fact that there were some guest poems in this one as well because they fitted the tone of the collection so well and yet gave a different voice mixed in with the final section of this book. It was interesting to hear from other poets and a great way to discover other voices and other books to pick up. I flagged some of their poems to return to as well as some of Amanda's. 

There are some amazing poems in this book. I loved some of the poems covering topics such a motherly advice, being called a tease and therapy sessions, as well as some dealing with darker, more personal topics. One of my favourites was 'I Believe in Endless Worlds' and also "Open up the Wardrobe and Step Inside'. One of my favourite guest poems was 'Wading' by Gretchen Gomez. I could relate to so many of these poems and definitely recommend picking up this book even if you are new to poetry. I recommend this whole trilogy and ultimately think it is best to sit down and read them back to back in one fabulous evening!

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK (out 5th April) or US (out now)

Review: To Make Monsters of Girls by Amanda Lovelace

What happens when the man of your dreams turns out to be a nightmare with sharp teeth and claws?"

Winner of the 2016 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Poetry, amanda lovelace presents her new illustrated duology, “things that h(a)unt.” In this first installment, to make monsters out of girls, lovelace explores the memory of being in an abusive relationship. She poses the eternal question: Can you heal once you’ve been marked by a monster, or will the sun always sting?

Review: This is a fabulous new collection of poetry by one of my favourites, Amanda Lovelace. This is going to be the first in the Things That H(a)unt Duology. If you loved Amanda's previous books then you will definitely like this one and this has awesome added illustrations which loosely connect with some of the poems in this book. I can definitely see myself going back to this book and looking at these beautiful illustrations again.

This book is broken into three sections; Monster-Boy, Monster-Girl and Sun-Heart. So the book itself forms the same sort of story arc that a novel might, we see the girl, we see her go through some things and then we get a happy ending of sorts. I really like the fact that we have this kind of arc because I think that this is what makes Amanda's work so accessible to those of us who are newer to poetry but read lots of novels, they are very easy to follow. 

Some of my favourite poems in the book include 'The Question II and I'; 'Two Sentence Horror Story' and 'Don't Try to Waste Your Time Again'. The writing in this book is so beautiful, despite the fact that is covers serious issues and topics which may make people uncomfortable, it is always just wonderful to read and definitely fills me with hope. I did cry at a couple of these poems too, which is a first for me. The book does cover some topics which require care warnings including abuse, eating disorders, self-harm, alcohol, religion, death, gore, fire and blood. Overall I thought this was a great addition to my bookshelf and I am sure it will be a great addition to yours too!

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

I also have a video review of this one over on IGTV if you would rather hear me speak about this rather than read the written review!