Simon McCormack, writer in residence at Lighthouse, Poole’s centre for the arts, is launching two new creative projects designed to provide a platform for new work created by the wider community.
Film-Poems @ Lighthouse celebrates the relatively new art form that connects the apparently disparate worlds of the moving image and poetry. Film-Poems are typically short, usually just two or three minutes long, featuring a voiceover or talking head and images that support the text.
“It’s about exploring new ways of presenting poetry, moving poetry away from people’s expectations and reaching out to the YouTube generation – something to have fun with,” says Simon.
“Films can be lo-fi, shot on phones, or they might be packed with wild graphics. There can be a narrative flow or not, literal representations of the words, or something more abstract. As long as the films and words are all original, no more than three minutes and fit the theme, they are the only rules.”
Starting in October, over the course of a year 24 film-poems will be screened as support features in the Cinema at Lighthouse.
Simon is also planning to publish The Beacon, a literary magazine for new creative writing submitted by local writers.
“It can be poetry, flash fiction, sketches, drama, an extract from a novel, prose poetry, anything as long as it is the written word,” he says. “The publication will be a printed journal, something tangible and lasting. My intention is to see the first one published and on sale at Lighthouse and after that it can take on a life of its own.
“We are looking for poems that pull you in, short-stories that demand to be read, drama and flash-fiction that owns the page.”
Submissions for The Beacon and for Film-Poems @ Lighthouse are invited on the theme of ‘Performance’.
“The idea of performance runs through our everyday experience,” says Simon. “There’s the ballet dancer on stage, the paint applied to the canvas, the child carefully spelling a word, the lollipop man holding up traffic and music heard through an open window. Go to the people and places where you find performance and show them to us.”
Simon is working as writer in residence at Lighthouse in conjunction with the Lit Up! literature development project to raise the profile of literature in Poole and Bournemouth. He also teaches Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and his poems have been published in magazines including The Poetry Review, Under the Radar, The Interpreter’s House and The Rialto. His pamphlet A History of Scraps will be published by Erbacce Press later this year.
Submissions guidelines:
Film-poems must be no longer than three minutes and should be submitted as a link. If accepted we will ask you to send a good digital copy to us.
Please include a paragraph or two about yourself in the main body of the email.
By submitting you agree to Lighthouse showing your work in the Cinema. You retain full rights to the work.
To be considered for The Beacon, poems must be no more than 40 lines; flash-fiction must be no more than 200 words and short fiction (stories or drama) must be no more than 2,000 words.
Send no more than one piece of short-fiction/drama or four pieces of poetry/flash-fiction per submission on a single document.
Please include a paragraph or two about yourself.
Writing can have been previously published, as long as you retain full publishing rights to the work.
Submit to [email protected] stating ‘Film-Poems @ Lighthouse’ or ‘The Beacon’ in the heading, before Thursday 20 August.
