The comma is the cost, a thing cut off – not a loss, but what we want. An entrancing metaphorical journey fusing filmic imagery, extraordinary poetry and musicianship to create a compelling meditation on adjustment, loss and reconciliation in times of change.
"In making 'Comma of Didymus' I challenged myself to try to make poetry film in a different way. I wanted to take some of the methods of poetry writing - like form, stanza, assonance, rhyme and rhythm, and find equivalents and ways to do these things using grammars of film. The result is a parallel but distinct audio-visual poem. Yes, there is a lot going on here - but I hope that in the end it all integrates to make an altogether new and interesting kind of artwork."
Steve Smart
“extraorinary, utterly unique … an antidote to the Anthopocene”
John Glenday
Comma of Didymus is a poem by Rebecca Sharp from her collection Long Field Loop (Tapsalteerie 2024), researched and written as part of her residency with the Centre for Energy Ethics at the University of St Andrews. Rebecca and Alex South performed a co-devised live version of the poem at the collection's launch in 2024, comprising voice, harp, clarinets and electronics.
"We begin with a free improvisation on a scale suggested by lines in Rebecca's poem ('the diminished fifth of a lapwing'... 'the ocean liner's minor seventh'). Later in the film we explore the possibilities of a small harmonic discrepancy between our instruments – the 'Comma of Didymus' itself! This is achieved by employing Pythagorean tuning on the harp, but tunings like this are always imprecise and volatile – 'As wood and strings resettle again/ reconciled to parities of breath and touch/ redrawn'."
Alex South
Steve Smart, Rebecca Sharp and Alex South have previously collaborated on the poetry film Velella velella which was selected for Fotogenia, the Scottish Landscape Awards, and the O'Bheal Poetry Film Competition. Steve also worked with Rebecca Sharp on THIS (finalist Brush & Lyre Multimedia Poetry) an online interactive poetry reading commissioned by StAnza International Poetry Festival, and Steve worked with composer Alex South on the poetry film TRAWL, which was commissioned by StAnza and screened at Zebra Poetry Film Festival in 2020.
Poet and visual artist
Poet, playwright and interdisciplinary artist
Composer, musician and bioacoustician
