Tag: poetry

Our Field of Dreams

Skye Collacott WilliamsonLeave a comment

Photography by Skye Collacott Williamson.

How unfortunate you were to love a girl who had never been loved,

Our constellations beaconing into a bridge for a time so monetary,

The love never quite married or quite buried in the cemetery,

Reformation or reconciliation, they will always protest against us.

Celebrations brought in a microcosm of my bed, my walls, our kisses,

A field of dreams cascaded by a simple act of taking off your ring,

They ring the death rattle, and you slip it on my ring finger,

I slip it later inside my drawer against your dreams to linger.

Your sphere is intertwined in my ring finger; my sphere remains empty,

Oh, nevermind the passionate devotion to the alter to my hips,

Breathless to our echoing admirations of harmony upon our lips,

The snakes and larks could never understand the need for isolation.

The voices in my head implore the way your eyes engulf my existence,

My heart continues to beat for you, but I feel the valve resistance.

UWE’s Open Mic Night

Skye Collacott WilliamsonLeave a comment

First Published via HUB Magazine when I was Editor-in-Chief.

Date Published: 3rd November 2023.

Hosted by Scott Channon in UWE’s Student Bar every third Thursday of the month is UWE’s Open Mic Night. Whether you are a musician, a comedian or a spoken word poet, the Open Mic Night is open to all. Enjoy a few cheap drinks, live music, and bring a few friends.

A welcoming and livingly crowd, ready to support and here your music. There is a sign up board next to the stage for anyone that would like to be involved, open to everyone.

The event is hosted and organised by Scott Channon, a musician himself.

Max Meadows is an indie rock musician. He sang two originals, as well as Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger. A musician who brilliantly combines childlike wonder, and etherealness with an undertone of melancholy.

(View the interview article here by Skye Collacott Williamson. ‘A Hot Chocolate with Max Meadows’)

Stretched Thin is a solo artist. He sang two originals and a cover of The Pixies Where is my Mind?

Girlstupid is a folk acoustic band formed of Via (vocals), Jess (Guitar), and Molly (Vocals). They beautifully covered Boygenius’ Not Strong Enough, Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, and Phoebe Bridgers’ Georgia.

Art as a Lifeline: Comparing The Fabelmans (2022) to Dead Poets Society (1989).

Skye Collacott WilliamsonLeave a comment

First Published via HUB Magazine when I was Culture Editor.

Date Published: 6th March 2023.

While one may compare Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans (2022) to Damien Chazelle’s Babylon (2023), I suggest viewing it in the same light as Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989).

Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Fabelmans, follows a young boy who dreams of becoming a director and explores filmmaking’s beauty. The film also beautifully showcases the divide in the family between those who are logical, like the father, and those who are artistic, like the mother. While the mother is demonised throughout the film due to her affair with the father’s best friend and shows signs of mental illness, it is still clear that her love of music keeps her going through life.

Like Dead Poets Society, the father wishes his son to end this phase of art and find a real career. Unfortunately, both sons continue their love of art despite their father’s wishes, slowly destroying both relationships. Both films show that the artistic son looks to his mother for support and hopes to defend himself from his father.

Dead Poets Society follows a group of boys in a boarding school as they gain a new English Literature teacher that shows them the beauty of poetry: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute, we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion”. When he went to the boarding school, this teacher was part of the Dead Poets Society. In following his footsteps, the boys decide to recreate this society. Each boy is presented with his lifeline of art.

Though it is clear from the first fifteen minutes that Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) wants more from life, he wants to continue with the newspaper, but his father refuses to do this as he should do something more meaningful. As the film continues with the influence of Professor Keating (Robin Williams) to follow his passion, he auditions for the drama production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. When his father finds out, he takes him out of boarding school and informs his son that he will go to military school, as the behaviour is unacceptable. Neil Perry sees no other way out. In tragic symbolism, he places the forest crown from the play on his head and goes into his father’s office to shoot himself in the head. One may also infer that art could symbolise homosexuality, as the film closely follows his relationship with Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke).

Todd Anderson is presented as a shy kid, similar to Sam Fabelman (Gabriel BaBelle), who finds his voice through poetry. However, where his father discourages Sam in his pursuit of filmmaking, Todd’s parents seem absent from the film, only to arrive after Neil Perry’s death.

Both films also present art as a group-oriented activity between boys. While Sam is in Texas, his scout’s group joins in with his filmmaking. There is this beautiful moment Sam is directing a war-inspired film in the desert of Texas, where Sam gives a story to one of the lead boys. The scene is used to create emotion in the audience. As he ends the scene walking through the pretend dead bodies of the soldiers, the lead boy begins crying. Though this raw emotion of crying is not in Sam’s camera shot, only the audience of The Fabelmans sees this vulnerability. This could suggest how the patriarchy tells men how to behave and keep emotions down as they are viewed as feminine.

While The Fabelmans is generally a serious film with moments of beauty and humour taken from family interactions, Steven Spielberg breaks the fourth wall in the last scene. As Sam Fabelman is being interviewed and questioned by the same director that inspired him to make films, there is a lesson learnt about where the sun should be in shots. The director asks Sam to point out where the sun and light are coming from in the paintings in his office. It is observed that the sun should always be either at the top of the shot or from the bottom to make it interesting. As Sam Fabelman leaves the office, the wide shot of the street has the sun in the middle of the shot. There is this moment of hesitation and an undeniable movement to change where the sun is in the shot.

The Fabelmans ends on an uncertain note of whether Sam ever makes it as a director or not. The film takes place throughout his childhood to college years, whereas the Dead Poets Society only occurs at that time of year. Dead Poets Society begins with a ceremony for the new year and ends with the funeral of Neil Perry. As an audience, we do not know what happens to the boys after this life-changing year. However, in the most tear-jerking scene ever written, Professor Keating has been fired due to Neil Perry’s death. As he leaves, Todd Anderson stands on top of the desk and yells, “O, Captain. My Captain”. Slowly, the other boys begin standing at their desks to say goodbye to Professor Keating. This shows Professor Keating has done his job writing to make these boys think for themselves and express themselves through art.

References-

Chazelle, Damien. Babylon. Paramount, 2022.

Spielberg, Steven. The Fabelmans. Universal Pictures, 2022.

Weir, Peter. Dead Poets Society. Touchstone Pictures, 1989.

The Clandestine Existence

Skye Collacott WilliamsonLeave a comment

First Published via HUB Magazine when I was Culture Editor.

Date Published: 12th February 2023.

Photography by Skye Collacott Williamson.

Dearest reader,

I went too far this time.

I lay crestfallen on the wooden ledge overlooking the moors, and the clock in my room continues ticking. The raindrops on the window drowned in my misery. I am terrified to look at myself in the mirror, scared to be greeted by the woman I had become. The memory of unravelling her braids lingers in my hands. Her beauty was remarkable.


I hadn’t seen Rosalina in a month, and I knew it would be easier if I never did. Anxiously pondering over my mistakes would not achieve anything.


My husband is the love of my life in every way that matters. Father of my children, friend and first love. Benedict taught me how to love and that I could be loved. He built me a house, layering the stones of memories and decorating it with his love for me. Nevertheless, Rosalina – dearest reader, I cannot resist – planted her seeds of ivy over the walls. They grew subtle at first. However, each year, the roots grew deeper into the stones until they began to crack and crumble under their force. Until I am left as nothing but encapsulated by her, covered in her ivy, covered in our clandestine love.


I silently crept out of my house. My blue coat kept out the rain as I galloped through the moors. I continued until I was far enough to barely see the house, the newfound solitude, allowing me to finally scream everything that had been building inside of me for twenty-five years. The moors served as freedom, allowing me to remain unapologetically me. I would never have her love to keep; the thought maimed me. Then, when I was gasping for air, smiling at the heavy feeling in my lungs, I heard another horse approach and race past me. A dash of purple awakens me, I spur my horse even faster to catch up to her. I couldn’t let her disappear again into the fog.


“Rosalina,” I shouted, desperate even as the wind covered my sound.


The fog blurred lines in my mind, making it difficult to navigate. My entire life, I realised, mirrored fog. Only when I see her face does everything come into focus, into colour.


I had doubts about whether she had ever seen or heard me, but I knew I could not stop my shouting. Perhaps, dearest reader, it was by my distraction or despair to see my love leave me again. But as we approached the forest, I missed a low-hanging branch and came crashing, hard, to the ground in a breathless pile of a broken heart.


It must have been the loud snap that caught Rosalina’s attention.


It maimed me to love her, but is that not what love is? To be consumed by emotion, not to see reason? If love was rational, I did not want it, my dear reader. I’d rather bleed from the thorns of love than the curse of my own mind plaguing me forevermore in the question of whether she had been my great love.


She reached out her hand. Still breathless from the fall, I could not help hesitating and being enticed by the beauty in front of me. She had silk lavender gloves, a fact I noticed as I accepted her hand. Yet, perhaps it was my rampant imagination, but I could still feel the warmth of her skin against mine. This single thought cursed me speechless. Rain dripped from her eyelashes and chin, refocusing my attention on her cherry lips, slightly shivering from the cold rain. The look in her eye was not one of the stolen stares we frequently shared across crowded rooms, but vulnerability.


“I wish not to talk”, she retreated her hand from mine and turned her back on me.

This must be the cruellest of fates, not to talk to the person you desire most intimately in this world. To burn for someone and not reveal your friendship’s true nature. I could not hold the truth back anymore, nor did I desire to.


“I thought it was my title, my duty, my faith, I cannot live without.” I stepped towards her, shouting against the beating rain, “But it is you, whom I cannot and will not sacrifice.” Although her back remained turned against me, her head angled as if to listen to my pleas. “You maim me a million little times until I cannot breathe, and yet I still burn for you. You above all others. I am yours and always will be, Rosalina. I would ruin myself, but I shall not bear witness to my dearest children receiving the same fate…”


“I will not make do under any false pretences”, she interrupted me. The wind blew down her purple hood to unleash her wild curls. She held her hand over her heart with the other on top to comfort her as she breathlessly said, “your faithless love is a scar that opens eternally”.


I reached out to her, but I stopped myself, “You are like the rose bushes I pass by every morning. Your beauty draws me in, but no matter how hard I try to avoid their thorns, I pull away maimed.”


She shook her head. It isn’t enough. Anger bottled up so long inside of me. I am drenched head to toe in the water. I scream to the sky and curse it for granted, my love for her and yet taking away my ability to be with her.


“Look at this godforsaken mess you made me; I am bleeding my love for you.” I shouted at her. She appeared stunned at first until she stepped toward me, closing the space between us then placed her hand on my cheek.


“I have nothing else to say, except I love you. I have spent 10 years denying this damning fate.” She stroked my cheek with her thumb, “Marianne, I don’t want to do it anymore”. I pulled her closer to me. I am intoxicated by the smell of lavender and cinnamon. I stared into her beautiful eyes.


“You have bewitched my mind for ten years, I promise till I’m lying on my deathbed to truly, completely love you and spend the rest of my life making up for lost time”. She kissed me gently at first, but as the rain intensified, so does the kiss.