clotted sun, a short film for curious and west norwood cemetery



Curious opens at West Norwood on Friday and it seems like the perfect time to share this video documenting the research that has gone into making my anthology for the twelve dead poets (it was ten at the time of making the video). The film was shot at the Saison Poetry Library and includes some footage of the cemetery itself. The film was edited by Brian Watkinson and the camera-man Steve Gray. There will be some further short films soon about some of the poets I've found as well as one that captures the poets' words being returned to them in engraved stone format at West Norwood.

I'm also looking forward to spending a day at West Norwood with Tom Chivers in July. We had a chat by email today about Victorian anecdotes relating to the cemetery : washed-up bodies in the Effra and Dickens attending the funeral of Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd. The last time Tom and I dug back into the past was at Wapping Old Stairs to find the artefacts to include in Shad Thames, Broken Wharf. I'm not sure it's as advisable to go digging in cemeteries but the curiosity of poets has been recognised as a legitimate form of extremism.

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