Friday, November 26, 2010

SAICFF and The Sojourner's Poet Fellowship

Among the SAIC Film Festival's highlights was a rough screening of Ace Wonder, Message from a Dead Man. Directed by John Moore, this movie will show that independent, family, Christian studios can produce films which are technically sound and have good storytelling. It was satisfying to see the vast improvements in acting skills and in storytelling, and to hear a world class musical score by Ben Bodkin. Did I mention that John Moore's storytelling has improved?

Other good movies included The Runner from Ravenshead (VERY GOOD), Divided (Yes!), The Penny, Agenda: Grinding America Down, and Live to Forgive.

The main thing which I discovered at the festival, however, was an idea. I have long wanted to form (or join) a group of poets with a kindred belief in the sufficiency of Scripture. After watching the accomplishments of so many small studios and ordinary people, I have decided to put this group officially into a planning stage, with "The Sojourner's Poet Fellowship" as a working name. Membership will be by application/invitation once the Fellowship becomes official. Hopefully a founding document/manifesto will be forthcoming.

So come ye poets, (if ye do exist). James, may I enlist you as my first co-member?

4 comments:

Kyleigh said...

I am so disappointed I didn't know you were in San Antonio for the Film Festival until we were already in Dallas. We overlapped for a day.
I'm excited to see all of those movies, but most excited (in the odd sort of way one CAN be excited about a film like that!) for Divided. We have two copies sitting on our shelf but are waiting to have another family over to watch it with them.

The Sojourner's Poet Fellowship sounds like a wonderful idea... What's your definition of a poet, though?

Ezra said...

Yes. I saw your picture of the river walk and said to myself, what?! I was just there! Anyway, you will like Divided, and if you get the opportunity to see it, you will also enjoy Runner from Ravenshead.

Excellent question. I suppose the best way to answer that would be to define what a poem is. Then I can just say that a poet is one who writes poems. I'll need to address that in the SPF founding document.

I've always considered a poem to be roughly anything which uses some literary device to add beauty to the formation of words in a way which takes them beyond normal speech patterns (prose). Examples would include rhyme, thought rhyme, rhythm, and some forms of minimalism. I would hesitate to call free verse, absent of some other device, good poetry.

I would also question whether a God-focused poem can be written that has no value of edification in it for his children. There is a lot of humanism in poetry which needs to be flushed out. On the other hand, a lot of Christian poetry suffers from a massive amount of cliche.

James Dunn said...

Yes, you can count me in.

Kyleigh said...

Well, if you consider me enough a poet, you can count me in, too. I won't be offended at all if you don't consider me a poet. :)