Inspired by the recent release of the Alfred Leslie: Cool Man in a Golden Age DVD, which features Leslie's collaboration with the poet Frank O'Hara, this month LUX selects works celebrating poets and poetry. These films explore a wide range of approaches to the subject, from the unconventional biographical sketch of the poet themselves to works in which a poem is directly or indirectly interpreted, blurring the distinction between the poetry and film itself. The films selected centre around poems by Hugh MacDiarmid, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath and Martin Doyle.
Margaret Tait, whose film is a portrait of MacDiarmid, fully embraced both mediums and her work often highlights their interconnectedness. As well as a DVD with a selection of her films and a book of new essays on her work, a few copies of her rare self-published poetry books Origins and Elements, Lane Furniture, Subjects and Sequences and The Hen and the Bees are now available via the LUX shop.
Videos in this exhibition /
