Poetry films mentioned:

Do not go gentle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOZjrkfWIlM

La Plage by Alastair Cook

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/filmpoem-4-la-plage/

Acknowledgements

https://www.arvideriksson.com/acknowledgements

Additional Resources

Poetry Film Workshop web page (wide variety of many poetry film related resources) https://artsci.co.uk/poetryfilmworkshop/

Charles Olsen’s 2023 essay on ‘How to film a poem’ https://newsroom.co.nz/2023/06/13/how-to-film-a-poem/

Helen Dewberry’s book ‘How to make a Poetry Film (a handbook for poets)’

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/helendewbery/how-to-make-a-poetry-film/

Regular podcast host Samuel Tongue, after a meetup with the Friends of the SPL group, rolls up his sleeves and gets thinking about two poems by Nick Makoha from his much acclaimed and award-listed 2025 masterpiece, The New Carthaginians (Penguin).

What they said about The New Carthaginians:

"A dizzying experience... like Dante entering hell through a rip in the universe, Makoha enters history, accompanied not by Virgil but by a Black Icarus with a microchip for a mouth, and the shade of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat" - Philip Terry (Guardian)

"A moving collection of entangled histories. Makoha’s poems break, cut, scratch and sample with heightened language to remake and renew the boundaries of myth. Do not sleep on The New Carthaginians - Raymond Antrobus

"In this book, Nick Makoha has found an otherworldly, visionary voice and diction that arrest you from the first page and never let you go." - Jason Allen-Paisant

"Profound, sheer originality... a tantalising jigsaw puzzle of a book" - Tristram Fane-Saunders (Telegraph)

Winner of all three Forward Prizes for poetry, Robin Robertson has had seven collections of poetry published and holds the distinction of writing the only poem ever nominated for the Booker Prize: his epic 2018 work The Long Take.

"Robertson's emotional terrain is difficulty and guilt; often he writes as if his poems have arisen from a pact with the devil. The poems are clear-lined, sometimes hard-edged, and meticulously worked." - Deryn Rees-Jones

"The genius of this Scots poet is for finding the sensually charged moment ... and depicting it in language that is simultaneously spare and ample, and reminiscent of early Heaney or Hughes." - New Yorker

Regular podcast host Samuel Tongue, with the Friends of the SPL group, rolls up his sleeves and gets under the bonnet of two vintage Robin Robertson poems:

Cat, Failing

Swimming In the Woods