Niddrie

The combination of film and poetry is an attractive one. For the poet, perhaps a hope that the filmmaker will bring something to the poem: a new audience, a visual attraction, the laying of way markers; for the filmmaker, a fixed parameter to respond to, the power of a text sparking the imagination with visual connections and metaphor. All of my work with poets can be seen at or on the Vimeo channel Filmpoem Niddrie was screened at the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh on the 25th and 26th March 2010 as part of ongoing film and poetry project The poem Niddrie is by poet and This Collection co-ordinator Claire Askew and is read by Alastair Cook. "A shock of scrubland in between slums:
 a shudder in the workings, and in the dark 
the car gives out a high, thin keen. Ice clings hard to the few cars parked
 or chocked in the choke of grass – 
some without wheels, without windscreens. I can smell the slats of card 
and chipboard, scorched and rotting 
in the damp of drying greens. Ken whit? you say, as the car ebbs 
and coughs: Ken whit? Here’s where 
they filmed yon Trainspottin scene." The film Niddrie is ©Alastair Cook 2010 The poem Niddrie is ©Claire Askew 2009

Channel: Vimeo Video Length: 1m 16s Date Found: Thu, Jun 02 2011 11:05 PM Category: Home Video Date Produced: Mon, Mar 15 2010 4:33 PM View Count: 0