Anchor (November)

The anchor is smug. He may lift up or cast down. Argument is rendered peripheral by his diversionary voice. Experts and half-wits alike are rendered redundant by the switch of his divine attention. Random asides buffet, issues wave in the wind, each side colourful as the other, or b&w. No gutter-talk, no interjections, no statistics, November. The anchor refuses to be dragged in, clenches the minutes like a scorecard. He won’t be dragged along. Vital details are missed, the question is the answer. He ups out of a tempest of subtitles, floats the boat towards next week’s secret offshore destination.

B&W (November)

Seven b&w photographs, seven seconds each. Photograph of spider nimbly stepping from glass jar, released onto off-white courtyard casters. Photograph of two pages of print, the chapter on creativity in Oliver Sacks’ ‘The River of Consciousness’. Photograph of a half-used blister pack of Panadol, reached for to handle sinus shoots in the forehead. Photograph of glass of water for swallowing Panadol, white lip, shadowy edge. Photograph of night window with reflected flash, an intense one-second full moon. Photograph of the pillow bank supporting back during ‘The River of Consciousness’. Photograph of a hand holding ‘The River of Consciousness’ one November.

Huge (November)

Kenneth Branagh utilises Blenheim Palace to enact ‘Hamlet’. High ceilings and folding doors give formal dimension to over-reaching act and claustrophobic thought. Disparate motives leave bloodied bodies all over the parquet floor. We already know how it ends so let location be constant symbol. Now murder is on the Orient Express. The set is yet larger, huge, the Bulgarian alps during snowfall and landslide. Showering down in cinemas this November, the story moves ornately through upholstered carriages high above gorges. Window facets multi-mirror faces of the duplicitous. The body is bloodied from haphazard blows while the linen is perfectly flush.

Homer (November)

James McCaughey delivers Iliad stories in real time. His frame is an ancient fortnight festival, sign itself of peace, where on successive days he recounts the war poem. We hear it too. Come from a Manus Island protest, I hear the privations of siege, fears felt, extremes met. Then Homer’s repetition of a ‘perfect day’, the excuse relatives are told who have lost their young. My great-uncle, remembered this November, was killed one hundred years ago for the gods of king and country. In spite of the waste, honour will be upheld and his presence in that Western wilderness haloed.