{"id":7539,"date":"2016-01-21T16:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T16:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=7539"},"modified":"2016-01-21T16:44:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T16:44:51","slug":"nomans-land-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/7539-nomans-land-common.html","title":{"rendered":"Noman&#8217;s Land Common (Film-Poem Online)"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/152471055\" style=\"width: 100%; min-height: 375px;\" frameborder=\"0\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><noframes><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/152471055\"><img src=\"https:\/\/i.vimeocdn.com\/video\/552486948.webp\"\/><br \/>Click to watch<\/a><\/noframes>\n<h3>Noman&#8217;s Land Common<\/h3>\n<p>A shadow passes over the meadow, effortless<br \/>\nin its cooling presence, a wake<br \/>\nof songbirds, for a moment stilled,<br \/>\nfor a moment passed over<br \/>\nby a presence like night, a shoal of fish<br \/>\nbeneath the barnacled hull,<br \/>\ntender in covering, blanket-soft,<br \/>\nthe lids pulled over<br \/>\nour welling eyes, to shed a drop<br \/>\nin the pool of soft grasses,<br \/>\nwhich ripple, concentric,<br \/>\nin an unseen wind that blows<br \/>\nall things, together, onward, all things,<br \/>\neventually into crossing,<br \/>\ninto parting, into the covering-over<br \/>\nof life with&#8211;not death, exactly&#8211;<br \/>\nbut the other side, the other life<br \/>\nin which cloud, meadow, fish, ship<br \/>\nreveal their true names to us&#8211;<br \/>\nflashes-through-sunlight, dark<br \/>\nmoisture, ink of relentless progression.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 12em;\">A brush dipped<\/span><br \/>\nin clear water, the pigment&#8217;s smoke,<br \/>\na cipher of leaves in the swirled cup.<br \/>\nThe Hawthorn renounces her wedding vows.<br \/>\nSlow raptors finger the dryness of heat.<br \/>\nNameless, in the new world, a congregation<br \/>\nof petals, root, trunk, and branches,<br \/>\nnew leaves, in the unnamed world,<br \/>\nhold out their yellow hands to the rain.<br \/>\n<span style=\"margin-left: 12em;\">A voice cries out<\/span><br \/>\nin a language you recognise, and the cloud&#8211;<br \/>\nfor that is what it is, just a cloud,<br \/>\nretreats in spinal curvature over the hill,<br \/>\nwhich is grass, then soil, then stone,<br \/>\na foetus in the centre, its open hand<br \/>\na gesture of greeting, of saying &#8220;goodbye&#8221;&#8211;<br \/>\nand now you are on your knees, in a field,<br \/>\njet-lagged, on a Wednesday, remembering<br \/>\nyour name, a gift from your mother,<br \/>\nas the multiplication tables arrange<br \/>\nthemselves before you, pieces for chess,<br \/>\na calendar full of meetings in which<br \/>\nyou can never say: for a moment, I was<br \/>\nthat shadow, say, listen, I have been<br \/>\nto the other side of life, and a child<br \/>\nrests in the womb of the earth,<br \/>\nbut instead stare-down at your ink-stained<br \/>\nhands, and nod, and arrange your broken<br \/>\nface into the gesture of listening.<\/p>\n<h3>Process Notes<\/h3>\n<p>With the tenth anniversary of the birth and death of our son James fast approaching, I find myself writing about the ongoing effects, including sudden and overpowering moments of grief. The text came first. I then shot time-lapse of clouds through an inexpensive toy kaleidoscope using a Raspberry Pi camera. I also shot real-time nature footage through the same kaleidoscope by holding it up to my smartphone camera. Valerie composed and performed the music. The title refers to a nearby patch of common land in North Hertfordshire that we frequent. One year, after extensive tilling, a field adjacent to the common erupted in red poppies, not unlike the no-man&#8217;s land of the First World War.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Noman&#8217;s Land Common A shadow passes over the meadow, effortless in its cooling presence, a wake of songbirds, for a moment stilled, for a moment passed over by a presence like night, a shoal of fish beneath the barnacled hull, tender in covering, blanket-soft, the lids pulled over our welling eyes, to shed a drop &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/7539-nomans-land-common.html\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Noman&#8217;s Land Common (Film-Poem Online)<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,23,3,4,1268,5,14],"tags":[168,248,1161,746],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}