When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere they create the radioactive isotope carbon 14, which can be detected in living matter and decays at a fixed rate over many millennia. Radiocarbon dating is the method by which we measure prehistoric time, and with which our own detritus will one day be measured. The filmpoem Radio Carbon takes this transient yet permanent record of time as a personal metaphor, fashioning a hypnotic journey into the human past, from the neolithic to the present moment. It’s a film with eternity at its centre, the vastness of space at its core, and a reverie of images clustering to the lens like the flashing in a stranger’s eye.
Three poets, four walls, one venue, Saturday night, MAP Studio Café, New Moon Jazz Poetry.
PAUL LYALLS: He has performed with Will Self, Miranda Hart, John Hegley, Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze, Roger McGough, John Cooper Clarke, Andrea Leavy, George Best and Michael Rosen, Prince Edward and Rasta Mouse. “Lyalls paints a breathless montage of warm atmospheric images to absorb…there isn’t a word wasted as each road-tested poem presents a taught stronghold on the page” – The BOOK TRUST
ASHER HOYLES: Asher Hoyles is a performance poet. She writes in a variety of styles and her poems have appeared on London buses. She has performed at Glastonbury Festival and the ICA, as well as in schools and colleges, libraries, prisons and community centres.
TIM CUMMING: “Tim Cumming is a brilliant poet in many senses of the word: his poems are urbane, intimately well-observed, and evince a true wit… The poems in The Rapture shine with an aesthetic that is pure in itself and pure satisfaction for the reader. But his work is nearly unique amongst contemporary poets in that, within this artistry, his subject matters, as they consider how a person may deal with a range of experience, are sensitive and profoundly humane. His is a perfect voice of the new times where art meets the heart.” – John Stammers
Featuring a RARE London screening of Cumming’s acclaimed film poem Radio Carbon. Oscar-nominated film director Henry Alex Rubin (Murderball, Disconnect) has said of Radio Carbon: “I watched your film – you used the word hypnotic. The only thing you said: it’s hypnotic. Which is a very humble thing to say. It’s not hypnotic, it’s very beautiful. There may be moments where some of the imagery was hypnotic. Maybe mesmerising is a better word than hypnotic. I thought it was really brilliant, I was amazed at how well it all came together and how beautiful that music is, and it reminded me of Yeats. The Second Coming. The whole thing. I was stunned by how beautiful it was. I love how the images come back at the end – the snow, the stag. It’s very beautiful what you’ve done.”
MAP Studio Café
46 Grafton Road
Kentish Town
London NW5
7pm, £7 entry
New Moon Jazz Poetry Evening
See more by Tim Cumming at The Rowley Gallery.
