VIDEO POEM: LOST, featuring Caroline Reid & Port Adelaide

To celebrate Poetry Month in Australia, I am sharing video poems and performances of some of my poems. I'll also include a synopsis, a bit of history about how the poem came about, and the full text of the poem. Here's the first one: LOST, a video poem. Enjoy!

 

In 2017, I won my first poetry slam hosted by Draw Your (S)words. As part of that prize I got to work with emerging film-maker Pamela Boutros to make short film or video poem of one of my poems. We spent a day shooting in Port Adelaide (Yertabulti) and made LOST.

SYNOPSIS & CONTEXT:

LOST is a fusion of poetry, visual art, humour; it's a blend of the personal, political, cultural, spiritual, & performative confessional. I'd written a few terrible poems, and thought I'd never write a good poem again. Not being able to write became my starting point: 'Most days   I am not a poet'. Instead of pushing away my thoughts, I began paying attention to them, my worries and regrets. I wrote them all down and saw the poem emerging.

 

FUN FACT: 

People regularly ask me if this line in the poem is true: 'The chairman of the board of the Sydney Theatre Company is also the CEO of the Commonwealth Bank' At the time of writing (2017), yes, Ian Narev was both the CEO of the CBA & Chair of STC. He 'retired' after insurance and money-laundering scandals. But don't worry about Ian. He is now the CEO of SEEK Limited.

CAST/CREW/SPECS:

Film maker: Pamela Boutros

Poet: Caroline Reid

Featuring: Caroline Reid

Filmed in Port Adelaide, Australia 2018

 

OFFICIAL SELECTIONS:

OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, Australia 2018

George Town Festival, Penang, Malaysia 2018

7th Ó Bhéal International Poetry Film Competition, Cork, Ireland 2019

ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, Germany 2020

Poets With A Video Camera: Video Poetry Retrospective Exhibit 1980-2020, Vancouver, Canada 2022

 

PUBLICATION:

LOST is published in SIARAD, poetry and prose (ES-Press, 2020) 

 

LOST, the poem (full text):

most days    i am not a poet

most days    i am lost in the space between poems

and when i go looking i don't want to find suffering and regret

but that's the thing about poetry

it can lead you where you don't want to be led 

 

and so

 

here i am / i'm twelve

 

i'm quiet as an egg when they said 

lindy chamberlain murdered her own child

and it was 32 years beofre that woman's name was 

cleared

i am lost in these spaces / these places

between poems

and some days (not most days, just some days)

i do regret not doing more when i was younger

all those jobs i didn't strive for

people i never became

poetry readings / protest marches / family lunches

i missed them bcs i was still pissed from 

the night before when i kissed 

the wrong boy & had unsafe sex

 

regrets / i've had a few / but then again

the only thing i truly regret is

that i didn't listen more

to the wind, shifting / the earth, trembling / and to my heart, that old chestnut 

bcs if i had known how to listen

i might have discovered sooner how to trust

getting lost in these spaces / these places

between poems

getting lost in the crook of an arm / or the shadow of a rock

in a stranger's story of suffering / or the whiff of bad luck

in my thoughts / as they fly over sun-drenched roofs disappearing into light

in the palace that is night

and in the astounding silence when we turn off our phones

and listen -

in my lifetime almost 70% of the world's animals have disappeared bcs of uncontrolled human expansion. there are more displaced people now than after world war two. the chairman of the board of the sydney theatre company is also the ceo of the commonwealth bank ..

i get lost in these spaces / these places between poems

and when i went searching for an ending

all i could find was this smart-arsed poem

who told me - 

             you will find your end in the place of grace where poetry is heard

 

    (and there you are)

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