Danielle Mensah – 15th January 2012
Words in Motion
The school was set a live brief by ‘Smile for London’ – a company in charge of a two week project to ensure poetry would come to life on the London underground. Three students, including myself, from SCA2 won a spot with our poems. They would be animated and placed on the digital screens of the underground from the 16th January.
‘Oh, how interesting!’ is the general response when I tell people, but it’s the next question that leaves me a little bit twitchy – ‘What’s your poem? I’ll look out for it.’ It is here where I look at my feet and um and ah whilst explaining my poem. I can tell you I used the ‘1000 scamps’ technique, taught to us by the dean of SCA2, and I can tell you it’s based on a real tube journey truth – but the actual poem… I just tell people to look out for my name. It really is embarrassing talking about your work, especially when you understand your reasoning behind it, but others just stare blankly at you when you try to explain it.
On the night of the launch party, I bullied the boyfriend into attending with me, hoping he could push past his barriers of logic (which come with being a civil engineer) and enjoy a night of immeasurable creativity. When my poem was finally shown on the big screen, he turned around to me and said ‘It’s really good! But you’ll have to explain it to me later.’
My reaction to seeing my poem for the first time was surprisingly not one of embarrassment. I stood there dumbstruck for the 10 seconds it aired, being awoken only by the applause from the audience. I don’t really remember what the animation looked like if I’m honest, but I remember being so proud. To produce work, have it come to life, and have people receive it well was an overwhelming experience. If this is what being in advertising feels like, I’m sold.
I have attached two videos below, the first is a teaser video made by ‘Smile for London’, and the other is of Scroobius Pip’s ‘Thou Shall Always Kill’ from a few years ago – he’s a spoken word poet who also won an underground entry. He’s awesome.
SfL: Word In Motion Teaser from Smile for London on Vimeo.
