@FayRoberts.bsky.social’s fifth sonnet this year is inspired by Federico Fellini’s metatextual bit of sophistry, the Italian movie, 8½ (1963), written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Rondi, and starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, and Claudia Cardinale. The first 31:30 made a strong impression… Of all the tropes that I despise in art it’s this one that can bore me in a trice: that every single character, each part’s despicable, with no redeeming slice of virtue, humour, sweet humility, affection for their friends, or even half an ounce of kindness, unless they’re to be discarded, punished, nameless, fatted calf. And worse! Fellini knows he’s got a dud! He makes the writer tell us to our face! He hopes to smear his audience with crud, to make us all complicit in this waste. I’ve failed my challenge: watch each doled-out reel. But I won’t play the voyeur for this heel. The precise moment where I tapped out If you have access to the BFI (which I won’t shortly because my free trial runs out), you can watch the 2:18 long, multilingual (but mostly Italian) movie here. Content warnings include: misogyny, xenophobia, toxic relationships, suffocation. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it! But please don’t try to tell me I’m a philistine for tapping out. That won’t go well.

This poem was inspired by Close Up (1990), an Iranian fi@leannemodenpoet written, directed and edited by Abbas Kiarostami. The fi@leannemodenpoet recounts the true story of a man who pretends to be a famous Iranian fi@leannemodenpoet director. Does he do this to defraud people out of their money? Or to escape his own life? Or just because he loves cinema so much? You’ll have to watch the fi@leannemodenpoet to find out. Close Up includes real footage from the man’s trial, as well as reconstructed scenes, featuring all the people who were involved. Con artists are very fashionable at the moment, and I’ve also just finished reading House of Leaves, so the poem gets a bit labyrinth-y, a bit minotaur-y here and there too.   #14 – Walking backwards into air  A man can be accused of minor flaws:of indiscretion when his temper flares,of walking backwards, slow, into the air,of leaving all his guts upon the floor.On sultry nights, a cold frustration flares: I cannot stand myself a moment more!I am the maze; I am the minotaur.Identities ephemeral as air.One person ends, another one begins,with prospects now as wide and blue as sky,an echo of the pure and the profane. And, when that life’s coherence starts to thin,an alter-ego lands, a subtle lie,and suddenly the world is new again! @leannemodenpoet  Image via Wikipedia

#50 - les Quatre Cent Coups (1959)   The art evolves, but slowly – glacial pace. Divergence rattles, comfort is narcotic; as careful rehashed bankers win the race, and torpid lies the culture – dull, sclerotic.   I understand, I get it – writing sonnets is hardly avant-garde – my aging mind just bimbles out in verse whatever’s on it: new innovations might leave me behind.   I still say evolution needs a shove – no gentle nudge, but something firm and drastic; not intervention’s ca@leannemodenpoet, supportive love, but revolutionary, iconoclastic. So man the barricades, and raise the flag – a boy, alone, freeze-frame: la nouvelle vague. @andybennettpoet for the video of this poem and more, visit Andy's Patreon

(@russell.j.turner) This year we are using fi@leannemodenpoets from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts Fourth up from me is Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (1953 - #92), through its theme of the treatment of women in warfare, and the metaphor of pottery From clay they come, by hand or history, each fashioned for a purpose or by fate ‒ a jug, a bowl, three women annotate old monuments of joy and misery. By brothel, drunken spear and jealousy, two bend under the stratagems of hate. The third arises from a charred estate ‒ a phoenix of desire, of loyalty Yet those who walk in darkness walk in light, each in their own way casting off the past ‒ one reconciles the future with the fight, one sings beyond the grave, content at last. Through warfare, rape and death, through love and spells, all vessels break and then remake themselves RJT

@FayRoberts.bsky.social’s fourth sonnet this year is inspired by Agnès Varda’s nouvelle vague observational tragedy (can you tell I’ve no idea how cinema language works?), French movie, Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), written by Agnès Varda, and starring Corinne Marchand, Antoine Bourseiller, Dorothée Blanck, and Dominique Davray She turns the cards out one by one to see the only colour in this tense affair. But please don’t make a fuss, ma belle chérie – you’ll mar this mask they need of savoir faire. We flirt with luck, and check the numbers twice; I don’t have time to list out all the signs the auteur uses in this room’s device. Ça ne fait rien – this angel’s not resigned. What hope she has is sculpted in the curve of friendship; stares define what she’ll become. Grotesqueries abound at every swerve, but c’est la vie – hold fast and chew your gum. Mais si tu n’est pas fort, la chance prévaut, car sinon l’avenir arrive… trop tôt. Still sourced via The Criterion Collection If you have access to the BFI, you can watch the 1:30 long, French language movie here. Content warnings include: medical concerns, cancer, period-typical misogyny, grotesque street theatre, racism. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

This poem was inspired by Chungking Express (1994), a Hong Kong comedy-drama written and directed by Wong Kar-wai. It’s an anthology fi@leannemodenpoet, featuring two interlocking stories about love, proximity and non-traditional expressions of intimacy. The perfect fi@leannemodenpoet to write about on Valentine’s Day!  #14 – In the bar that you loved, I always a@leannemodenpoetost see you  your floral perfume lingers like a kissyour menthol cigarettes reduced to smokewe’re always never meeting here like this you are a conjuring produced from hope proximity is such a fickle frienduniting us in space but not in timeI write my name on napkins to pretendthat I am yours and that you might be mine but we were destined to be passing shipsthough once I thought I saw you by the doorI caught a fading smile around your lipsa smile I’d seen a thousand times before an apparition bathed in pink neonyour perfume lingers longer now you’ve gone @leannemodenpoet  Image via Wikipedia

Andrei Rublev, 1966   Where art is colour, life is monochrome – regardless of the medium one chooses; we need bright jesters, spurred by faith and muses to pierce the waning of a greyscale gloam.   Hominid hands adorned sepulchral homes to ease the pains of Neolithic bruises; downtrodden slaves’ graffiti still amuses amidst the dusty ruins of ancient Rome.   a toddler’s rainbow – light chromatic bridge to soothe the hunger of a barren fridge a vibrant tune, kaleidoscopic ditty to cheer your view across a dismal city   We thirst for Art – the art must never stop; but still: fuck off with all your AI slop. @andybennettpoet for the video recording and more, visit Andy's Patreon 

(@russell.j.turner) This year we are using fi@leannemodenpoets from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts Third up from me is Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979 - #43), with a sort of stream-of-consciousness interpretation of its source material, Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky Brothers Regrets the mythic monument consoled Oblivion with fortune in its fold Advance, retreat where legends come untold Do Not Pass Go as heat melts into cold Sing shattered flowers faded by the stone Intelligence has left you all alone Down deep by ways imagined and unknown Exulting onwards, backwards bone-by-bone Perhaps our reasoning concludes too quick Incomers from the cosmos, shoot and trick Chimeric ghosts through deathly candlestick Now cancer boils beyond the river bed In colour bleached, in colour left unsaid Come let your monkey save you from the dead RJT

@FayRoberts.bsky.social’s third sonnet this year is inspired by Billy Wilder’s screwball/ gangster/ romantic comedy (kinda), USAmerican movie, Some Like It Hot (1959), written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (from stories suggested by R. Thoeren and M. Logan), and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. She says she loves the ones who play the sax and, bitterly, she knows she’s in their thrall. But now, in sweet escape, she finds that all her wonder is encompassed in cold facts, because it’s not the instrument that lacks it’s her, existing dimly, sipping gall, anticipating some or other fall, while hope remains a glimmer in the packs. If peace is what she’s seeking, heaven knows she’ll never find it, playing with a band, and millionaires don’t drop out of the sky. So she’ll confide, and cross her fingers, grow in confidence, while all this time a man is lurking, as a perfect, single spy. - FAR Still from the movie via the New York Times If you have access to MGM+, you can watch the 2:01 long, English language movie here. Content warnings include: gang violence, Prohibition, alcoholism, and misogyny. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

This poem was inspired by Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) directed and written by Céline Sciamma. This is the first one on my list that I’ve actually seen, and it was a joy to use the themes of the fi@leannemodenpoet as a jumping off point for a poem. However, in thinking about a lady under water, I was also drawing on a short fi@leannemodenpoet called The Deepest Dance by André Musgrove and Ariadna Hafez, and the last book I read, Private Rites by Julia Armfield.  Content note: Poem contains references to drowning.  #10 – Portrait of a Lady Under Water The day is shaking loose around its joins: the storm is breaking, making for the shore.As raindrops fall like fractious, freezing coins,all warnings lost in tempest’s surge and soar.  My footing slips, I stumble from the quay;the ocean swells around me, like a spell.My burning lungs a painful augury of life and death in perfect parallel. The world a blue and bruising monochromesubmerged between the surface and the deep,I feel at once tenacious and alone, I feel the overwhe@leannemodenpoeting urge for sleep. And, though the lights around are growing dim,I gather all my courage, and I swim. @leannemodenpoet  Image via Unsplash

 La Regle Du Jeu, 1939 Some games are more for playing than for winning the rules are there to gently guide the fun to leave the players satisfied and grinning enjoyment trumping prizing who has won this take of mine – more sinned against than sinning – once had monopoly (forgive the pun) the golden rule, writ large from the beginning an infant maxim, taught to everyone:   It’s not the winning, but the taking part! consoling oft, to mitigate the tears, as toddlers meet and greet their maiden loss; and worth repeating to those grumpy farts whose jealous, urn-ward glances last for years – it’s much more fun when one don’t give a toss.@andybennettpoet for the video of this poem and more, visit Andy's Patreon

(@russell.j.turner) This year we are using fi@leannemodenpoets from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts Second up from me is Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973 - #66), primarily influenced by my own visit to Senegal and Dakar about thirty years ago, particularly Île de Gorée and Maison des Esclaves (plus a small anachronistic nod to the Paris-Dakar) The road to Paris ploughs through seas and schemes ‒ this motorbike won’t navigate those sands whose shifting currents hide the whispered lands. As ships sail out to all the world’s extremes not far from Gorée’s echoed age-old screams, where memory and monument still stands to mark the manacles and fiery brands that bled to manifest another’s dreams Within the embassies we wait and yearn for slips of paper worth their weight in gold, as dimly then distinctly we discern hyenas that bamboozle, thieve and burn foundations of the constructs we’ve been sold ‒ illusions of departure and return RJT

@FayRoberts.bsky.social’s second sonnet this year is inspired by Satyajit Ray’s groundbreaking novel adaptation: Bengali movie, Pather Panchali (1955), written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay (author of the autobiographical novel) and Satyajit Ray, and starring Kanu Bannerjee, Karuna Bannerjee, Sarbojaya Ray, Chunibala Devi, Uma Das Gupta, and Subir Banerjee. A mother’s worries never seem to end, and father’s dreams are solipsistic, vast, so what is she to do but scrape and mend, and cling to hopes betrothed to class and caste? A web of obligations resonates in sickness and in health, and dimly lit. As seasons come and go, she numbly waits, her daughter not content to fret and sit. She runs, and climbs, and perturbates, and cares, and swears that she will never be a wife. And what’s the punishment for she who dares the crime of wanting better for her life? You’ll find out, being hitched to faulty stars, what disappointing creatures poets are. Image of Karuna Bannerjee as Sarbojaya Ray from the Cinematograph review If you have access to Wikipedia, you can watch the 2:04 long, Bengali language movie here (or on Amazon Prime with very different subtitles and worse image quality). Content warnings include: poverty, death, casual family violence. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

This poem was inspired by the fi@leannemodenpoet Late Spring (1949). It was by directed by Yasujirō Ozu, and was produced in Japan during the American occupation after the Second World War. I was especially interested in the aspects of the fi@leannemodenpoet that were censored (mentions of American bombing and occupation, and the Japanese traditions that do not align with American values specifically) and how the Ozu skirted these rules to make something that still resonates with Japanese culture at this time and place. You can read more about that on Wikipedia here, if you like.   #6 – Tiny Acts of Rebellion   I cannot write of city ruins here,our script is flipped; the harrowing erased.The absence curves, like question marks in space:the gauzy veil of history hangs sheer.  I cannot tell of occupation now:it lies, like rubble, hidden from the lens.And I’m reduced to shaking, making sense of censorship and all it won’t allow. But, in the mise-en-scène, you’ll see it clear:the English words, the Coca-Cola sign.On celluloid, the darkened shadows shine,the bleakness in the staging, rendered here.  A portent, camouflaged for us to find;rebellion as subtle as a sign. @leannemodenpoet Image from Late spring (1949) from Wikipedia

M, 1931 Some poets say that writing’s a compulsion – like somehow, they’re afflicted with a curse; they speak in terms of horror and revulsion at something so benign as crafting verse. “I need to quench demonic fire inside – to quell demented voices, vent the rage, and tear my psyche open naked wide – eviscerate my torment on the page!     Suffice to say I differ from this norm – my muse is cut from ca@leannemodenpoeter cloth, it seems. A privilege is poesy, not a duty – the fire’s a spark that keeps me toasty warm; the voices, long-dead poets sharing dreams; the torment, only heartache caused by beauty. @andybennettpoet for a video reading of this poem and more, visit Andy's Patreon

(@rascalapache) This year we are using films from the Sight and Sound 2022 list as prompts First up from me is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960 - #33), along with Gus Van Sant’s pointless remake Our Californian butchery begins not far from Fairvale, where the Bates Motel stands like a monument to filial sins ‒ a seedy small-town cinematic hell. Conversant with the carnage that ensued, some cineastes will bore us with the cast ‒ “But did you know the characters include the wonderfully named Milton Arbogast?” Then Gus Van Sant, in nineteen ninety-eight, decided to completely replicate this classic film ‒ a shot-for-shot redraft that’s more to do with marketing than craft. Though given Norman’s chosen tool of strife, perhaps not shot-for-shot but knife-for-knife... RJT

@FayRoberts.bsky.social’s first sonnet this year is inspired by Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid’s short, surrealist, USAmerican movie, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), written by Maya Deren, and starring Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid: She runs and runs, but never hopes to catch the chiffon billowing, the mirrored stare. She rises, clambers, thinks she’s met her match. (But who’s to say, in this dim place, what’s fair?) It’s soft and hard, she’s bright and dark, alone? The key’s inside, and gravity’s a glitch. Acknowledge nodding roses, keys, and clones... Is this prediction? Time to flip the switch. Now tread each texture down, don’t run in place – the sea’s a sighing echo of the land... We rise to find the only speaking face; this is no accident, but was it planned? Was she possessed? What did the dream portend? And who’s the one who’s dreaming, in the end? still of the movie, from of the review on THE CINEMATOGRAPH If you have access to the Internet Archive, you can watch the 0:14 long, mostly wordless movie here. Content warnings include: implied violence, unreality, blood, nightmares. Let us know what you thought if you’ve seen it!

This poem was inspired by the 1999 French film Beau Travail, which was directed by Claire Denis. The film is set in the former French colony of Djibouti, and the main characters are all French Foreign Legion soldiers. I haven’t seen the movie (yet) but as I was reading the plot description online, I was struck by the themes of power, cruelty and disorientation in the story. These were the things that were swirling around in my mind when I wrote this poem.  It’s also my first time playing with an unrhymed lines in a sonnet – sacrilege!  #2 - Good Work  In this expansive openness, we menare gods, and just like gods, we seek to cause destruction of our fellow deities;a desert of our twisting spite and shame.  This heat incites each man to lose his way – his empathy a glittering mirage.This heat incites each god to dissipate –and we are left as devils on the sand.  The work is always harder than it seems,and gods and men are harder, still, to bid.The desert swallows all, no compromise;it swallows, spits, and saves us from ourselves.  We wanted to believe we did some good;the wreckage, lying silent, seeping blood.  LM Poster Image via Wikipedia

 #3 Citizen Kane, 1941 The mountain rises ­– rain falls either side; the river carves new courses thru the plain the views will never be the same again as fertile meadows form, which coincide   with fauna stirring, brash and dewy-eyed. this metaphor’s attempting to explain the moments I first met Charles Foster Kane – murmuring veiled macguffins as he died.   That’s it? I wondered, What’s the fuss about? a callow youth so sure of what he knows too blind to spy invention’s fearless edge – to see the context; then to puzzle out the level land before the mountain rose and Ozymandias in a burning sledge. AWB

This February four* intrepid poets set off on adventure into poetry territory. Twenty-eight* days, twenty-eight* sonnets. Let's go! (*sometimes more)

(@rascalapache) This year I used the seven days of the week as prompts for a crown of sonnets With various words from various songs by various artists 1) Blue Monday ...as Monday rolls the wheel around once more, with memories just sailing…

  (You would not believe how long this took @FayRoberts.bsky.social to put this graphic together) Full text for the Seven Deadly Sins follows: The gateway to the seven stands right here. 🍎 you long to touch, but cannot quite commit to all…

1. Red Sky At Night The prism splits a humble beam of light, and colours manifest like sorcery.The streak of scarlet, clotting, bold and bright,as potent as the raging, wine-dark sea.  Our past, in ochre, painted at Lascaux; or cartoon-hearted oaths to…

  William Mulready. image credit: V&A Museum London 1.       Infancy   expectant, trepidatious, on we go: a blooded, squalling babe, a bag of needs. a home, a crib, a blanket, frequent feeds; a family to shield us as we grow…