Friends, I am delighted to invite you to contribute to a new digital project while we are all in lockdown, and hopefully beyond.

I have been asked by the wonderful poet Jo Colley to work with her on some activities to launch her fourth collection, Sleeper from Smokestack Books. It’s a glorious book full of double lives, Cold War spies, masked relationships, and emotional distances.

While we can’t bring you a physical launch (yet), we would very much like you to take part in a film renga. A renga is a long poem of linked verses that are created by several poets in collaboration,  under the guidance of a renga master. The renga master directs the flow of the chain, and will select each verse in turn from the selection put forward by the poets.

In our renga, we are providing you with a weekly prompt, which is a short verse from a long poem in the Sleeper collection. We are asking for a 20 second video clip that complements the text rather than directly illustrating it, and which also responds to the images already accrued. Each time we release a new prompt, we will also show you the film so far.

Here is your first prompt:

the table in your house
dim light on a glass of brandy
incoherent babble, justifications

And here are the instructions:

1. Read the prompt
2. Watch the film so far (applicable from week 2 onwards)
3. Take a 20 second piece of footage (to allow for editing)
4. Your video should contain images that complement the text, but not necessarily be a direct illustration of the images in the text
5. Your video should be responsive to the feel of the composite film so far
6. Please hold your device in landscape orientation when filming (like a TV screen)
7. Please email your video to sleeperpoems@gmail.com
8. Prompts and the film so far will be released every Monday for 11 weeks, and deadline for each week’s submission is 5pm every Friday