Kurt Bailey is making a movie

...and it's called The Daymaker. There is a journal of progress on the film here.

And he's uploaded some video of tests for the film here.

There are also links to fantastic photos by Ted Rogers and by Thomasin Alter at the Daymaker site.

Poem by Kristi Bojdani

The Day That…

I see lights,
Steam coming from the ground,
Scary figures dancing to a song,
And me standing in the middle of an empty room.

I see a house burning
And the rain falling.
Madness in the dark.

I smell ashes,
Temperature increasing,
Leaves fighting with the wind.
Grayness embraces the dirty sky.

A green hand grabs my neck
It doesn’t allow me to move
My eyes slowly close, my existence fades.
The night came too soon.
The mesmerizing eternal dream
Has found me.

artwork by Katie Pierce

Writing Prompts by Joe Mashburn

1. Construct a story with absolutely no characters. This includes animals, trees, imaginary people, or a main character.

2. Set a scene for a short story without using adjectives. Description of the surroundings is prohibited.

3. Write a story from a bee’s perspective in which you sting a person you know is allergic. Why would you do this? What made you so angry?

3a. You can actually extend this further, and turn Winnie the Pooh into a not so loveable bear…

4. Write a story from the view point of a child. By child, I mean infant. And by infant, I mean no words or movement. I suggest studying babies before attempting this prompt.

5. Describe a hockey game. However, do not describe the game. Describe the fan you are sitting next to who believes he is the announcer and has a smart comment about every player on your team.

6. Use your most boring day to make the best piece of writing you have ever created.

7. Write about the girl you are madly in love with. However, write from the point of view of your other best friend who is a girl to whom you have ranted about all your issues throughout your past.

8. Write a poem without using punctuation or line breaks. However, the speaker of your poem is from a foreign place, so he/she will not know the correct words for some of the things he/she is attempting to describe. Go crazy with this one.

9. Write a story about an alien species that takes one earthling every year. Write it from the perspective of the mechanic for the space ship.

10. Write a first person story with a third person narrative. [Joe explained this one to me and Farsh, but I fell asleep. I think Farsh started behaving in the way described by the assignment, though, so he may have understood what was going on.]

11. Write a story where your character flies. Write it from the perspective of the bird that is flying next to him/her.

12. Write a story in which the main character has a storm cloud over only his head. Write it from the point of view of the storm cloud. Swearing at the character is encouraged.

Poem by Mebane Robertson

Boy

One thing I fear is not so much
The usual awful feelings. It is the plain silliness
That sometimes comes over me
When I am feeling nice and comfortable.

I have been burned badly
Often when being giddy,
And am most open to being harmed
When I am madly laughing.

I will always make this bed neatly, tuck
The four corners in tight before I crawl
Under it, where I hide
Some pieces of a light I broke, where nobody

Will look. But if they make me explain,
What will I say? All the king's horses
And all the king's men? When the days in store
Would teach me the lesson without their help?


[Poem from Mebane's book Signal from Draco, out from Black Widow Press. Mebane's work has appeared previously on Green Hill, and he is currently featured online at Able Muse. This poem is published by permission of the author.]

artwork by Katie Pierce

Poem by Antonia Pozzi

Love of Distance

I remember that, when I was in the house
of my mother, in the farmland,
I had a window that looked out
onto meadows; a distant wooded border
hid the Ticino and, farther away,
there was a dark strip of hills.
Then, I had seen the sea
just once, but I harbored
the bitter nostalgia of a lover.
Toward evening, I gazed at the horizon;
squinted my eyes; and with my eyelashes,
caressed edges and colors:
the strip of hills turned flat,
trembled, became blue: to me it seemed the sea
and I liked it better than the real one.

(24 April 1929)


Translated by Nicholas Benson
[also at the Project for Innovative Poetry, with another translation previously on Green Hill]


Biographical note: When Antonia Pozzi (1912-1938) took her own life at the age of twenty-six, she was virtually unknown, but the notebooks she left behind were filled with terse poems of astonishing power and controlled lyricism. Her verse places her alongside the ‘hermetic’ poets of her day – most notably Montale, Ungaretti, and Quasimodo – but her voice is solitary and unmistakable. Her poems are collected in the volume Parole (Garzanti, 1998), and a collection of prose has been published as Diari (Scheiwiller, 1988); a selection of her work has been published in English translation by Lawrence Venuti (Breath: Poems and Letters, Wesleyan UP, 2002).

Two poems by Nazim Hikmet

Because of you
every day is a slice of melon, smelling of a delicious world
Because of you
every fruit stretches to my hands as though I were made of sun
Because of you I collect honey from hope alone.
The beating of my heart is because of you.
Because of you, even during my worst nights
the Anatolian kilim smiles down from the wall.

Because of you, reaching the end of my road
into the city, I rested in a rose garden.
And because of you I’m not letting in Death,
who’s put on his softest slippers and is at the door,
singing gentle summons to great comfort.



Lullaby

My soul
softly shut your eyes
and as if sinking deeply into water
naked and white, enter sleep
the most beautiful dream awaits you
so go to sleep...

My soul,
softly shut your eyes
let yourself go, as if you were on my lap
and sleep,
in sleep don’t forget me
just sleep...
softly shut your eyes
your green hazel eyes
and sleep, my soul,
go to sleep.

You’re above
in the budding branches
your green eyes full of sun
your lips covered with honey
I’m beneath the tree
with a foot in the grave
I’ll be gone long before you,
and you’ll remain, growing old without me.


[translated by Nick Benson and Emine Azak]