In responding to Fire I was struck by the fact that the flames took on a life and personality of their own. As the film was silent, I wanted to give the fire an opportunity to tell its story and this sparked And the fire said … and Fire Father.
Watching the film again, the fact that the fire is started by a woman, and is ignited in the breast of piece of clothing, took me into the realms of cancer (especially how it spreads) and this triggered Carcinoma.
The film Earth has a beautiful quality of detachment. The fact that we only catch glimpses of the woman’s body, that she is naked in the woods, and that she appears to be searching, took me to Eve in Eden and the parallel between her story and the dystopia of a 21st century eating disorder. These ideas conjoined in Eve, tempted.
In terms of the project as a whole, the directness and simplicity of Anna Cady’s films encouraged my poet’s lens to ‘peer through’ the images on the screen to try to discover the story behind the story. That’s the one a poet always wants to tell.
Hilary Hares lives in Farnham, Surrey and spent 27 years using the power of words to raise money for charity. She has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Winchester and is currently working towards an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
Anthologies: Hampshire Writers’ Society, Lines Underwater
Magazines: First Time, South, Obsessed by Pipework, Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, The New Writer, Writing Hampshire.
Email: h.hares@btinternet.com
Elemental Dialogues 