Poetry Video Archives - Elizabeth Barton

The Voice

People tell me I have The Voice. I never thought about it until I started to read and perform poetry. But for years, I used my voice creatively without realising it. Through many incidents in my life, I trained it to become an instrument, a tool for effective expression. Singing in adult choirs helped.

The Voice Began With Flying

I learned to speak clearly and succinctly as a result of studying for the Radio Telephony Licence, which was part of my pilot training. Thanks to dedicated instructors, I learned early on speaking confidently and authoritatively over the radio admitted you through controlled airspace in the UK – and the US! Any hint of hesitation or bungling in your voice would spark reluctance in the air traffic controllers at Luton or Stansted – or Orlando – to allow you to share the same airspace as the big jets. The training paid off. While still a student pilot, I worked the Luton corridor and Northolt, and a few other restricted spaces. Accurate flying helped, too, but that’s another story.

The Voice identified me to other pilots when I was flying in Scotland. One afternoon while stooging over Perthshire, I changed frequency from Scottish Information to Edinburgh Radar. Once I announced my callsign and intentions over the airwaves, a mellifluous voice greeted me, “Hello, Elizabeth”. No Golf-Bravo-Xray-Oscar-Foxtrot, which is a typical British callsign, but an address by name. The unidentified pilot recognised my Kiwi accent at once. Of course, it stuck out like a sore thumb amongst an ocean of Scottish brogues, some indecipherable to my ears. This particular greeting came from south of the Border. I wagered he was one of the former instructors or pilots from Lydd Airport and had bagged a swish flying job with some local airline. Naturally, I returned his salutation. It was quite informal and strayed outside the bounds of RTF protocol.

Cumbernauld Bingo Hall

I had a secret evening job where The Voice came out in full play. I was a Bingo caller at the local Bingo hall. Everyone there knew I flew by day. No one at the flying school knew I stood on a stage with a microphone by night calling out numbers. I landed the position precisely because of my voice, honed by hundreds of hours flying and working the radio. Fellow Bingo staff loved my accent. One girl wanted my voice recorded on her mobile phone, to announce to callers, “Put another shrimp on the barbie”. Although that expression is not typically Kiwi, and in fact has the rattle of chains about it, I obliged. The message became her voicemail! She played it over and over to raucous laughter. Fortunately, the infatuation with foreign accents was mutual. I relished the musical lilts of so many different Scottish accents.

Cumbernauld Bingo Hall acquired a reputation for being exceptionally lucky. Naturally, it drew players from all over North Lanarkshire and every night the place was packed. On one of the few nights I worked the floor, a woman insisted I stand right beside her for the entire evening. She believed I was a walking good luck charm. After all, the customer comes first, and I willingly obliged. I only left her side for toilet breaks or to get more change for the players. Her belief paid off. She walked away that night £800 richer.

I was almost as impressed and mused on ways to rub some of my magical luck onto me. But I digress! One story unfolds into another, and so on. Now to fast-forward to the present.

Waterfall Waiorongomai

I recorded the poem Waterfall Waiorongomai to join the thematic suite of poems I began in All Revolutions Begin This Way. My voice caught the ear of Sanjeev Sethi, who remarked about it on X after watching the video.

Waterfall Waiorongomai, the poem

How intuitive! Sanjeev wondered if I was a professional voice-over artist. His own words say it best.

Naturally, I struggled to indulge his interest after suggesting I would upload a recording of my voice-over for the Te Aroha Dramatic Society’s production of Dirty Dusting. Firstly, I couldn’t reduce the file, and finally decided I didn’t want to regale his ears with my Big Boy impersonations. The Waterfall poem was sufficient.

However, for the curious, there’s the YouTube recording of the Voice introduction on the Events page.

The Flying Years

As a parting word, the top image depicts my successful flight in ‘Pegasus’, a privately owned aircraft at Tauranga Aero Club, in which I flew for the New Zealand CPL flight test. It was 2013 and feels like a lifetime ago.

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The Filming of Abandoned

The Abandoned Bushman’s Hut

The filming of Abandoned was a memorable and unexpected spiritual adventure. I was determined to record the poem before the place which inspired it became inaccessible. Abandoned is part of the Waiorongomai poems from All Revolutions Begin This Way. The collection opens with these poems, exploring the history of Waiorongomai and the search for gold.

The poem stands out in a preview by A. Pelletier, featured on the back cover of the book. He describes it as a ‘dilapidated cottage’ based upon the poem’s depiction. At the time of writing it was. Since then, the old bushman’s hut has become virtually unrecognisable, now a complete ruin covered in towering ferns. I originally wrote the poem six years ago! Our last visit was in 2019, when we chanced upon the relic while on another, more ambitious quest.

Preview of the poem Abandoned featured on the back cover of All Revolutions begin This Way — **Preview for the poem Abandoned**

The Return

Our return to the abandoned hut brought joy and fresh discovery. The emergence of an inner world woven into the fabric of nature left an impression on our being which lingered for days.. Equally, I felt we we had left some kind of imprint in the places we passed. A resonance of location became a key which we could unlock with memory. On the way to our desired destination, I noticed the absence of the Portals which I had sensed previously. Especially at the river crossings where the frisson or shimmer of air indicated their proximity. Or so I thought.

Elusive Music

While I was filming on my own, I heard music drifting up from the river below. It intrigued me. It sounded like live concert music, but far away and elusive. Flutes and voices. It could have been a Bach chorale. The sound wasn’t tinny, like it would if belched from a mobile phone in a public place or from a passing tramper. That was in fact my first impression. that someone was walking the track below with a device playing. I expected a visitor to come blundering up the track in the next few minutes. Our precious enclave would no longer be a secret!

But no one came. I noticed interesting orb effects in some of the photographs I took while I could hear the strangely beautiful music.

**The curious orb effects in a liminal setting**

I called out to my film editor and fellow adventurer, Mr Possum, ‘Can you hear that music?’ He heard nothing.

More Mysterious Effects

Other anomalies occurred. It was impossible to get the camera in focus for filming. It would flick in and out of focus on a whim. Videos I loved were unusable! Misting effects and distortions of time and place recall similar experiences an author describes in his book Brigantia: a Mysteriography. The book is out of print, but its mysteries are curiously relevant. A fairy shoe kept in a cabinet in a Yorkshire residence was unphotographable. It always appeared on film as if sheathed in cloud. No matter the angle. or lighting, it eluded any photographer. It took us two visits to get usable footage for the video.

During the second visit, we both heard laughter drifting up from the river below before crossing it to reach the path on the other side. I bemoaned the idea that we might encounter bathers or explorers on our secret path, but on reaching the water’s edge, no one was to be seen anywhere!

Later, it occurred to me we may have passed through the Portals into another world, slightly out of phase and displaced from the place with which we were familiar. Filming Abandoned unveiled an unforeseen magic.

**Filming Abandoned proved an elusive quest.**

Finally, with much editing wizardry, we produced something close to the original vision.

And here it is, the published YouTube video.

More about the collection All Revolutions Begin This Way can be found on previous blogs, here and here.

The Books page provides a link for purchasing the book – or contact me directly for a signed copy.

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Maui Catches the Big Kahuna

The Making of Maui

The video creation for the poem Maui Catches the Big Kahuna was a tremendous adventure. The subject was perfect for ocean vistas and crashing waves, providing a perfect backdrop for Maui’s storyline. We spent a lot of time on Waihi Beach, filming in all weathers.

Waihi Beach in one of its many moods, setting the scene for Maui Catches the Big Kahuna — **Waihi Beach in one of its many moods**

At the beginning of the video, I am walking up the beach in a howling gale. The inbuilt microphone in the camera was not up to the boisterous elements, so I recorded my voice over the footage in the quiet confines of the studio. It took a lot of coordination, lip synching over the video and tweaks from the technical wizard, Mr Possum, to perfect the timing. The result was near seamless.

Serendipitously, a solitary wind sailing surfer appeared in the background in the middle of filming, which was miraculous. Here was our Maui, photo-bombing the video in a stroke of impeccable timing. He appears in the middle section of the final video, synchronously woven into the poem.

Video capture of wind surfer in Maui Catches the Big Kahuna — **The serendipitous moment the wind surfer appeared**

We did much of the storyboarding in a nearby café, sheltering from lashing wind and rain. As a result of our activities, one of the waitresses there was curious to know what we were up to! After much quaffing of Spy Valley Sauvignon and sampling seafood, we were ready to turn vision into video.

It took months. From inception with the original poem, to the final filmic creation on YouTube, was an inspiring and challenging journey. I enjoyed showcasing the video at a recent Poetry Event at the Pumphouse Theatre. The video is available to view on the blog.

The Origin of Maui Catches the Big Kahuna

No one will ever know the initial prompt – the poem sprung out of a terrible realisation which unfolded as some perverse joke. The reference to the word Kahuna provides a clue. Who did Maui catch, who saw himself as rather important? I followed the vision, as if viewing a film in helpless wonder. So many things fell into place!

The title for the poem literally appeared before me, like smoky writing on a wall. Initially, the poem settled upon me like a pre-migraine weight (only I don’t get migraines); it felt like that fuzzy brain that comes before stormy weather. The Muses churned in the background. Then the body of the poem followed like velvet carpet bombing my mind. I think I wrote it in a day.

The Test Flight with the Dragonflies

I introduced the Dragonflies Writers Workshop in a previous blog, Flight of the Dragonfly, At the next Zoom meeting, I dared to air the poem. It was perfect for the theme of the next session: Myths. I had to dive in. After reading it, the participants reacted with interest and intrigue. They quickly divined there was much more hidden beneath the surface. The truth told in slant, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, became a topic in itself. The poets in the seclusive Zoom space knew more about the driving force behind Maui than anyone in the outside world! It was like being at confessional, but without the spectre of sin or expiation.

Clothed in the actions of an iconic mythic figure, the poem detailed an incredibly personal journey in which symbolic ciphers will not be decoded for a long time. All I will say is that the poem’s completion determined the difference between life and literary death. Poetry is the lifeline.

Eventually, Maui Catches the Big Kahuna surfaced on the Flights E-journal in Issue Ten. What a journey! The video was a continuation of that journey and followed much later.

And here is the video. Enjoy!

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