“Here again, not well, likely a turnspit, jiggered … whose trajectory scours my sleep? What worriment forths mildewed landsend?”
Massive thanks to Michele Seminara and Verity La for presenting my video A Captain’s.
A captain, out on the high seas, on commission from his king, heading to the colonies, reliant on rigging and caulk and the charade of polite society to keep afloat … Is there a prick of conscience? An element of doubt? When duty calls, how much is lost? Most of the footage for this poetry video was recorded on my iPhone on a series of boat trips taken in Sweden during May 2019. The audio includes recordings from inside an old wooden windmill on the island of Öland. The concluding wave action was recorded at Moana, South Australia, in the summer of 2019.
Many of the captain’s unusual words are my inventions.
The video was a official selection at Carmarthen Bay Film Festival (Wales, May, 2020) and was screened at Kino Klub Split: Blending Perspectives, powered by AGITATE:21C (Split, Croatia, December, 2019). A slightly different version of the text was originally published in Transnational Literature 8.1 (2015).
Click here to see “A Captain’s” in Verity La.