Sarah Tremlett

Last updated
Sarah Tremlett
Born
Sarah Tremlett

1956
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)artist-philosopher, writer, poet, poetry film theorist, poetry filmmaker
Notable workThe Poetics of Poetry Film
Awards FRSA
Website www.sarahtremlett.com

Sarah Tremlett FRSA (born in 1956, Sheffield, Yorkshire) [1] is a British artist-philosopher, writer, poet, poetry film theorist, [2] and poetry filmmaker. [3] She is known for working with subjectivity and voice, experimental video poetry [4] and poetry films. [5]

Contents

The Poetics of Poetry Film by Sarah Tremlett with over 40 contributors The Poetics of Poetry Film book cover.jpg
The Poetics of Poetry Film by Sarah Tremlett with over 40 contributors

Tremlett is best known as the primary author and editor of The Poetics of Poetry Film. [6] This 400-page "ground-breaking, industry bible" [7] establishes the merging of historical forms from song, visual and lyric poetry alongside the origins of film, animation and performance. It interweaves philosophical threads through the genre and introduces a world survey of artists in their own voices. [8]

She was a fashion model in her youth. [9] This is documented in her poetic memoir Horse-Woman, [10] which revisits a traumatic and bohemian period in her past, writing, painting and modelling whilst living in a bedsit in London.

She is editor of the poetry film website Liberated Words online. [11]

Her project Tree is a long-running investigation into her unknown family history and includes prose, poetry and poetry films. [12]

Early life

Tremlett was brought up by oldish parents. [13] She later became a model, [14] notably for the bohemian fashion designer Thea Porter, [15] modelling for the Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall in New York. [16] She left fashion and worked backstage at Cambridge Arts Theatre, where she made costumes for the landmark "100 Years of the Cambridge Greek Play". [17] She also made hand-painted lampshades with "cave paintings" on them, which were sold at Aspects and at Practical Styling, the household goods and furniture outlet near Centre Point owned by Tommy Roberts. [18]

In the 1980s she exhibited her paintings. [19] She worked for Silent Books, Swavesey, Cambridgeshire, producing and marketing art and poetry books illustrated with wood engravings. [20]

Career

From 1995 to 1998, Tremlett and her partner, the science publisher Robin Rees, [21] lived and worked in the United States, where they were married. [22] Tremlett showed her paintings [23] and wrote scripts including the stage play, The Forger (about the emotional relationship between a forger and a curator), which was commissioned by First Stage and performed at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware. [24]

Tremlett completed an MA in creative writing at Bath Spa University (2001), [25] and went on to gain a distinction in a Fine Art Practice degree at Buckinghamshire New University (2005) with her thesis "Women and Text". [26] In 2015 she completed a research degree at the University of the Arts London titled "Re : turning from graphic verse to digital poetics". [27]

Since 2008 she has presented papers and essays, centring on subjectivity, image [28] and voice, and the intersection between poetry, film and philosophy. [29] She was described as a "Visual Philosopher" by Karina Karaeva of the NCCA National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow, who exhibited her videopoems: Blanks in Discourse : 06 at VideoFormat – [Linearity] Impakt Festival, 2009 and Patterned Utterance and Blanks in Discourse : 03 at Modus Group and Sarah Tremlett with Project Fabrika, 2010. [30]

A solo show Voices or Silences / Garsai Ar Tyla at the Cultural Communication Centre, Klaipeda, Lithuania in 2009 explored text and subjectivity in print and onscreen. [31] In 2012 the first MIX conference was born, and with the poet Lucy English she formed the project Liberated Words to screen poetry films from around the world.

She has worked with her two daughters, Hatti and Georgie, in her poetry films: see Villanelle for Elizabeth not Ophelia and Selfie with Marilyn, where Hatti plays Marilyn. [32] This poetry film, with poem by the American poet Heidi Seaborn and commissioned by the Visible Poetry Project, won the Maldito Video Poetry Festival prize in 2021. [33]

Lectures and presentations

Key speaker

Presentations

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2017

2019

2020

2021

2022

2023

2023–4

2025

Publications

Contributing chapters

Contributions to anthologies

Films and projects

Key poetry films

Projects

This project was founded in 2012 by Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English [63] to promote poetry filmmaking through the organizing of events, projects and festivals. [64] Tremlett has initiated and managed workshops with dance students and school children, [65] teenagers with autism, [66] as well as with older dementia patients in a local hospital. [67]

As editor of Liberated Words online she has been expanding upon the subject of poetry films and has identified and spearheaded forms such as ekphrastic poetry films (based on paintings) and family history poetry films. All the festival screenings under the aegis of the Liberated Words project may be viewed on the website.

Tremlett launched an ekphrastic poetry film prize in 2022 at LYRA Poetry Festival, Bristol entitled Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow I (with a bilingual edition Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II / Cuadro a Cuadros: Tus Ojos Siguen II in 2023). [68] Since the launch at FOTOGENIA in Mexico City she toured the book and screening in 2024. [69]

Poem Film Editions was launched by Tremlett with the poet and poetry filmmaker Csilla Toldy in 2024 to publish books that cross over between poetry and film, and also word and image publications.

Tremlett's own ongoing project hosted under Family History at Liberated Words to showcase poetry films on the theme of family history.

Critical reception

Publications

"What makes this collection so unique, besides the QR code-based format, is its emphasis on the ekphrastic videopoem. Just as Ana Segovia's painting Huapango Torero serves as a filmmaker's portal for new meanings, this anthology is likewise a portal as the reader is encouraged to move seamlessly between the page and streaming online content via QR codes. Not only is this collection truly innovative and collaborative in spirit ... this anthology brings the poetry film festival directly to the reader in a way that hasn't quite been done before. The Spanish translations by Camilo Bosso also allow for transnational and transcultural dialogues between artists, poets, and filmmakers." [70] Patricia Killelea assistant professor of English, Northern Michigan University.

"Sarah Tremlett's The Poetics of Poetry Film: Film Poetry, Videopoetry, Lyric Voice, Reflection offers a breathtaking range of glimpses at the historical flashpoints, formal anatomy, and major and minor contemporary makers and trends ... The Poetics of Poetry Film should serve as an important resource for scholars and filmmakers interested in contemporary aesthetic trends in this interdisciplinary field." [71] Rebecca A. Sheehan, professor of cinema studies, California State University.

"The Poetics of Poetry Film functions as an extensive survey of the field of poetry film, film poetry, videopoetry and the many related methodologies. . . . Tremlett's voice carries with it a level of authority due to her work as both a scholar on the subject as well as a practicing artist in network with the international collection of practitioners included in the volume." [72] Gabrielle McNally, associate professor of digital cinema, Northern Michigan University.

Poetry films

"[T]he formalists offered ostranenie, making something strange in the artwork, be it a poem, a novel, a film, even music or a painting. Making something strange also required 'making art difficult in order to heighten one's perception' . . . In the work Some Everybodies, Sarah Tremlett trains her camera on a street corner but renders the scene and the sound in more than half speed slow motion. An everyday scene is instantly defamiliarized, voices become blurred, indiscernible. Narrative space is perceived as strange, compared to real time." Tom Konyves, theorist and videopoet. [73]

"It's taking that subject matter [abuse of women], but at the same time there is this act of resistance, I saw the red lips as a flag of resistance. It's one and the same time both a giving in to that expectation to be a certain way and to not see the person but see the stereotype – what we have done to that subject – versus at the same time owning it. Taking it back." [74] Mary McDonald, poetry filmmaker and educator.

"I felt its emotional impact immediately and I was hooked by the multiple 'conversations' taking place through time. The voices are many: Heidi, Hatti, the artist, the haunting dialogue within Heidi's poem between Marilyn (as performance), Norma Jeane (as performance to a pre-Hollywood audience) and "meta-Marilyn" (or is that Heidi as the speaker of the poem?) who observes her various selves in action. Hatti's interpretation and 'embodying' of these fragile voices was subtle and shifting and rewards many viewings. There's a powerful sense of exploration and experimentation taking place in the piece – an extended improvisation . . . The structure refuses any fixed apprehension of what it might be to perform 'woman'." [75] Meriel Lland, ecopoet, photographer, nature writer and film poet.

"[It] was the built-in cut from persona to person that confirmed what had so moved me, which was Hatti's off-camera glance to the script. By built-in cut from persona to person I mean the context of an acting rehearsal and performance, delivery or attempted delivery of lines – it was a good idea to present and leave the takes as takes whose integrity, of gender and identity, juxtaposed as they are with each other, is multiplied across the three screens. Interesting how we move fractured, fragmented, ever so slowly from the screen on the left, to the right, with sound overlapping (distancing effect notwithstanding) to the centre, whose voice 'mutes' the Marilyn/Hatti on either side, conferring a resolved 'final' meaning to the performance ... Each glance off-camera is a shock to my system of understanding; she's a Marilyn-Hatti hybrid that becomes Hatti when she glances aside. Rinse, repeat." [76] Tom Konyves, videopoet and theorist.

"In terms of how Hatti aimed at being both Marilyn and Hatti and sometimes failed, this seems particularly poignant given our ubiquitous struggle during the pandemic and even before to navigate that gap between our online selves and our actual lives and identities. Selfie with Marilyn examines the tension in a subjective gaze—charting the shifting agency from viewer to viewed, or perhaps more accurately, playing with those ever-shifting power dynamics. And [ultimately] as Tremlett says, poetry film opens a 'rich and vital creative channel for us all to voice who we are, not who we are told to be, whilst sending ethical messages which are pertinent and critical in contemporary life today'. This is a powerful aspiration, one that deeply resonates with the intentions of this journal, as well as my own practice." [77] Rita Mae Reese, poet and fiction writer

"The sound is indeed central in Sarah Tremlett's videos which means she has achieved a full, mature conscience in the balance between the instruments of videopoetry. . . . In Patterned Utterance II, in front of us we have three fixed data screens, from a scanning probe microscope. As the microscope reads, so the black screens begin to scan in red (top to bottom) slowly unveiling the surface of a piece of silicon from three positions, showing changes in the scanning data. When the spoken word is heard, white lines appear on the screens. Here the game of revelation/unrevelation is given by the voice, which in the first part speaks clear statements like 'the impossibility of making the same error twice', 'transforming/distributing/storing' whereas in the second one, there is still the voice but the scan and the recording reverses; consequently, the meaning disappears. Thanks to these two videos I can develop a meditation about time which is very important in videopoetry. She/Seasons ('the sons of the sea, she sees the sons') is a philosophical declaration about the flow of time, not only the seasons, the sons who grow, youth, old age, but also the time to read, to understand, to accumulate knowledge. Patterned Utterance needs all its lasting eight minutes to reach the effect of listening/unlistening, even including the long pauses between the sentences or the words according to a precious rule introduced by John Cage: we need the silence to meditate inside ourselves the meaning of what we hear!" [78] Enzo Minarelli, polypoet, sound poet, performer, theorist.

Awards and honours

Notes

  1. ↑ See Family Search entry.
  2. ↑ Who's Who in Research: The Visual Arts. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2013.
  3. ↑ She won the Maldito Video Poetry Festival prize, Albacete, Spain, 2021 with Selfie with Marilyn, 2020 commissioned by the Visible Poetry Project with poem by Heidi Seaborn and starring Tremlett's elder daughter, the performance and special effects artist Hatti Rees.
  4. ↑ See 'Videopoetry: a manifesto by Tom Konyves' (2011) and Tom Konyves elsewhere on this page. Konyves spells Videopoetry as one word.
  5. ↑ Short films that typically include poetry either as voiceover and/or text on screen with the moving image and soundscape. See The Poetics of Poetry Film.
  6. ↑ The Poetics of Poetry Film was the subject of an interview by Meriel Lland, March, 2021, screened at the 9th International Video Poetry Festival, Athens, 6 June 2021, Filmpoetry.org.
  7. ↑ "The Poetics of Poetry Film", interview by Meriel Lland, March, 2021.
  8. ↑ See chapter on international films shown at ZEBRA poetry film festival by Thomas Zandegiacomo del Bel; video poets from Portugal and Spain in a chapter by the leading poetry filmmaker and poet Charles Olsen, and Argentina and Latin America from Marisol Bellusci, leading video poet and a director of VideoBardo, Buenos Aires, Argentina; also: "The Archaeology of the Text – The Poetics of Poetry Film", interview by Rebecca Rezakhani Hilton, Atticus Review, 10 September 2022.
  9. ↑ Bobton's, 40 King's Road, London, SW3 4UD. See also: Michaeljohn advert, Ritz Newspaper Supplement, Autumn/Winter Collections, 1979.
  10. ↑ See Publications.
  11. ↑ See Liberated Words under Films and Projects# below.
  12. ↑ See her website and Family History on Liberated Words.
  13. ↑ Her father Henry F. Tremlett, born in 1906 and her mother Dora née Jenkinson, born in 1914, were married in Sheffield in 1939 [1939, quarter 3, vol. 9C, p. 1812, Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, General Register Office, Southport, England].
  14. ↑ For Bobton's on the King's Road, Chelsea, London SW3. See also: Michaeljohn advertisement, Ritz Newspaper Supplement, Autumn/Winter Collections, 1979.
  15. ↑ McLaws Helms, L. and Porter, V., Thea Porter – Bohemian Chic, London: V&A Publishing, 2015, p. 140.
  16. ↑ Horse-Woman, p. 24.
  17. ↑ "A Hundred Years of the Cambridge Greek Play" programme, The Women of Trachis by Sophocles, 22–6 February 1983.
  18. ↑ Aspects, Whitfield St, London W1; Practical Styling, 16 St Giles High Street, London WC2. See House and Garden, May 1985, p. 20, and 19 magazine, March 1985, p. 9.
  19. ↑ "Sarah's Work Catches the Eye", Royston Weekly News, 16 February 1989, front page. See also Women in Art, The Bowmoore Gallery, 8 Halkin Arcade, Motcomb St, London SW1X 8JT, November 2–11 1989 (gallery's promotional flyer); Sarah Tremlett, The Old Fire Engine House, Ely, 8 February – 4 March 1989. See also Pauline Hunt, "Visual Arts" in Cambridge Evening News, 17 February 1989, p. 22.
  20. ↑ See "The Archaeology of Text", interview with Sarah Tremlett, Atticus Review.
  21. ↑ See biographical data for Moore & Rees Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy.
  22. ↑ Record of marriage.
  23. ↑ At The Gallery off The Square, Narberth, PA. See "New artists find their niche in a new venue", Catherine Quillman, Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 August 1997, p. B1. See also Making Marilyn: an interview with filmmaker Sarah Tremlett.
  24. ↑ Rick Mulrooney, "Grand's new venue suits 'Mirrors & Smoke', The News Journal, Newcastle County, Delaware, 15 July 1998, p. D2.
  25. ↑ Awarded 10 December 2002, Bath Spa University.
  26. ↑ Tremlett, S. (2005) "Women and Text". High Wycombe: Amersham and Wycombe College, Buckinghamshire New University, BA thesis.
  27. ↑ Tremlett, S. (2015) "Re : turning from graphic verse to digital poetics – historical rhythms and digital transitional effects in Graphic Poetry Films". London: University of the Arts, MPhil thesis OCLC   1376268386.
  28. ↑ See: "Making Marilyn: An Interview with Filmmaker Sarah Tremlett" by Rita Mae Reese, All Review, June, 2021.
  29. ↑ See her essay "Exploring Contemplative Effects in Text-based Video Poems", Poetry Film Magazin, no. 3, 2017, pp. 32–5. ISBN   978-3-936305-51-7, published by the Literary Society of Thuringia in Weimar and accessible on the online sites: Academia and Atticus Review.
  30. ↑ It was in relation to her conceptual text-based work, e.g. Patterned Utterance and Blanks in Discourse : 03 that she was described thus by Karina Karaeva, The Poetics of Poetry Film, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2021, p. 8. She was exhibited in VideoFormat – [Linearity] National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, co-curated by Arjon Dunnewind / Impakt Festival, 2009; Modus Group and Sarah Tremlett – Project Fabrika, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia, 2010.
  31. ↑ See Making Marilyn: an interview with filmmaker Sarah Tremlett.
  32. ↑ Hatti Rees (aka XaiLA) is a performance, make-up and special effects artist.
  33. 1 2 See report of 2021 Maldito Video Poetry Festival.
  34. ↑ The Poetics of Poetry Film. Bristol: Intellect Books, p. xix.
  35. ↑ See Ten Questions for Tom Konyves.
  36. ↑ "Matternal Philosophy, Female Subjectivity and Text in Art", in Ascott, Roy; Bast, Gerald; Fiel, Wolfgang (eds) New Realities: Being Syncretic, New York: Springer, 2008, pp. 292–6 ISBN   978-3-211-78890-5.
  37. ↑ See Making Marilyn: an interview with filmmaker Sarah Tremlett.
  38. ↑ Some Everybodies – Design and non-"dualist filmic experience", Experiencing Design, behaving media, Munich, Germany: Consciousness Reframed Conference X programme, 2009, pp. 99–100.
  39. ↑ See Moving Poems: Sarah Tremlett.
  40. ↑ See The Poetics of Poetry Film Bristol: Intellect Books Ltd, p. xix.
  41. ↑ See MIX 2012 Archive.
  42. ↑ See MIX 2013 archive.
  43. 1 2 See Moving Poem: Sarah Tremlett.
  44. ↑ The Poetics of Poetry Film Bristol: Intellect Books, pp: 44, 53, 70, 93.
  45. ↑ See: Sarah Tremlett: "From the rivers to the sea".
  46. ↑ See screening and reading on Facebook.
  47. ↑ See MIX Programme 2019.
  48. ↑ See conference proceedings, p. 67.
  49. ↑ See Poetry Film: an enquiry into defining a poetic genre (summary).
  50. ↑ See New Art Emerging: Two or Three Things One Should Know About Videopoetry.
  51. ↑ See Poems by Poetry Filmmakers.
  52. ↑ See Tree family history chronicle.
  53. ↑ screening details.
  54. ↑ See MIX 2023 archive.
  55. ↑ See also a bilingual documentary on the project: The Making of Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow / Cuadro a Cuadros: Tus Ojos Siguen
  56. ↑ Poem Film Editions is a publishing platform set up by Sarah Tremlett and Csilla Toldy.
  57. ↑ See Poetryfilmtage Poetryfilmtage website.
  58. ↑ See Stravaig, online journal of the Scottish Centre for Geopoetics.
  59. ↑ See pdf.
  60. ↑ See pdf.
  61. ↑ See pdf.
  62. ↑ Lucy English: The Book of Hours. Bristol: Burning Eye Books ISBN   978-1-911570-37-0 OCLC   1005687313.
  63. ↑ Lucy English is a poet and a reader in creative writing at Bath Spa University.
  64. ↑ In 2012 it was part of MIX conference at Bath Spa University, see MIX Archive 1; in 2013 there was a one-day festival at the Arnolfini, Bristol, see Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2013; and in 2014 a three-day festival at the Arnolfini, see Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2014.
  65. ↑ Dance-based Poetry Film Project devised and led by Sarah Tremlett, the ecopoet Helen Moore and the digital artist Howard Vause as workshop leaders. A joint project between English and Media students at Somervale School, Midsomer Norton and BDC Bath Dance College. See "Dance and Movement", a chapter in The Poetics of Poetry Film. Bristol: Intellect Books, pp. 305–9.
  66. ↑ "Listen with your Heart", Butterflies Haven (director Trisha Williams) screening and presentation, teenagers with autism poetry film project – external leader Sarah Tremlett, with the ecopoet Helen Moore and the digital artist Howard Vause as workshop leaders. See Howard Vause Films
  67. ↑ The Golden Bird project: in conjunction with dementia patients at the Royal United Hospital, Bath. See Howard Vause Films
  68. ↑ Frame to Frames: Your Eyes Follow II / Cuadro a Cuadros: Tus Ojos Siguen II, FOTOGENIA film festival, Mexico City, Mexico, 2023. Bilingual Ekphrastic Poetry Film Prize and Poetry Anthology published through Poem Film Editions with synopses and film stills and a QR link to the screening of poetry films. The festival painting Huapango Torero by the Mexican artist Ana Segovia is a call for an end to animal cruelty and bullfighting. The Making of Frame to Frames : Your Eyes Follow / Cuadro a Cuadros : Tus Ojos Siguen is a bilingual documentary on Frame to Frames. For an in-depth interview on ekphrasis and adaptation see: "From Page to Screen and Back Again – a Conversation with Sarah Tremlett on Ekphrastic Poetry and the inaugural publication from Poem Film Editions", interview with Patricia Killelea, Moving Poems Magazine, 17 August, 2024.
  69. ↑ To date, she has toured: FOTOGENIA Film Poetry and Divergent Narratives Festival, Mexico City, Mexico, December, 2023; REELpoetry, Houston, USA, April, 2024; Weimar Poetry Film Festival, Weimar, Germany, June, 2024; We Need to Talk About Ekphrasis Now, Leeds Trinity University, Leeds, July, 2024; Bristol Literary Film Festival, Bristol, UK, October, 2024.
  70. ↑ "From Page to Screen and Back Again" interview with Sarah Tremlett on Ekphrastic Poetry and the inaugural publication from Poem Film Editions", Moving Poems Magazine, 17 August 2024.
  71. ↑ Rebecca A. Sheehan, professor of cinema studies, California State University in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, vol. 17, no. 2, June 2023, pp. 101–5.
  72. ↑ Gabrielle McNally, associate professor of digital cinema, Northern Michigan University, in Visual Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 146–7, 17 November 2023.
  73. ↑ See Ten Questions for Tom Konyves from Moving Poems.
  74. ↑ "Climate Change and Subjectivity", Ian Gibbins, Mary McDonald and Sarah Tremlett in discussion with their related work, for REELpoetry, Houston, US, April 2023.
  75. ↑ Selfie and the Image.
  76. ↑ Selfie and the Image
  77. ↑ "Making Marilyn: An Interview with Filmmaker Sarah Tremlett" by Rita Mae Reese, All Review, June 2021.
  78. ↑ Enzo Minarelli, "The Sound in Video Poetry" (translated from the Italian) in The Poetics of Poetry Film. Bristol: Intellect Books, 2021, pp. 158–9.
  79. ↑ Sarah Tremlett's website.
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