Screen Dreams

Tonight marks the the end of first Stroud Film Festival. CleanSteve has gone out for a final drink with some of the organisers, in his capacity as town councillor and film lover. I've only been to two events, but I hope to see the festival return next year, or perhaps the year after. 'My' gig was last Thursday, where poets and artists gathered to celebrate the launch of the above slim volume (priced at £2!) which accompanied the film festival. My work has appeared in several such slim vols, so is not necessarily destined for posterity, apart from among collectors of poetry 'zines.

I've pasted in the two poems of mine which appear in the booklet. In fact, I'll have to post them in one at a time, because I am on the iPad, so apologies if you're reading this and there's only one up so far.

The film that I watched today (tried to watch it the other day but was too busy multi-tasking to take it in) was The Imitation Game, about Alan Turing and the Enigma decoding machine. I found it deeply moving, and was saddened by the state-sponsored homophobic climate of the time. What a waste.




The cinema at the end of the pier

Waiting in wet streets
neon spills into puddles
turning memories green

and pink, recalling
fish and chip nights on the pier
snuggled against you

waiting for the first
feature, the tinny tiny
tannoy braving waves

Ladies, gentlemen
please take your seats! deckchairs slide
the audience cheers
the lion roars again.

Sunny Sundays beam
white city streets on our screen,
screen bent back by wind

- how it howls and prowls
whipping seasonal clothing
into submission.

Somewhere a man
tap dances. Somewhere on the
pier a rope-tyre strains

and yields, is borne away
on the gale. Meanwhile, on screen
the dancing man in

Spats and cravat finds
his love at last. Beneath our
seats the timbers strain

and groan. We wonder
once more if the pier will hold,
if the dancing man

will keep on loving:
still smiling husband, trapped in
the brilliant city.

Copyright Helena Petre, 2015


Screen Stories:
Brokeback

Behind their shining love truth lies:
tawdry, tenacious, flecked with grease
stained with whisky, cigarettes, boredom
endless chewed-out years

The rodeo, the stars, the sheep skulls
pinpoints in a search for soaring
that ends in fishing trips and half-lives
postcards stamped in fear

This is it? The dead one lying
in a ditch, his parents silent
room of boyhood stark, untouched
where dust will never stir

For this one summer, intense, in tents
for this, the memory licks the brain
knots their troth, their truth, in silence
- for this, they'd give it all again



Copyright Helena Petre, 2015



NOTE: I am trying to avoid the trap Annie Proulx's correspondents fell into. I chose this film because it's the only film I remember going to see twice in one week: once for the story, the second time to drink in the cinematography.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/brokeback-mountain-author-annie-proulx-says-she-regrets-writing-the-story-9949636.html