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My name is Gil.
I'm Israeli; I'm doing a study in Portsmouth University in the UK
I'm exploring the process of poetry making; the process of inspiration,
that visionary poets feel or experience before they actually write.
So once the poet physically writes a poem on a paper,
that's when my thesis stops.
I'm not interested in the so-called ‘product’,
I'm interested in taking one step back and asking, what is this inspiration?
What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to visualize that experience.
That visionary experience, you could call it,
through making films.
I'm actually making films which give shapes, colours and textures to that experience,
drawing on my own personal experience.
So I'm trained as a graphic designer with BA.
and I'm also a poet; so I'm documenting through film my own experiences.
My core argument,
the reason that I'm doing this PhD is because I argue that visionary poets, they don't imagine reality.
They don't turn reality into magic,
but they turn magic into reality.
I argue that visionary poets, they don't imagine,
but they actually do see the magic which is in reality;
and they bring it down.
The purpose of my research is self-exploration
and outlining and visualizing that creative process of poetry.
I'm trying to understand the methods by which the poet sees the beauty of life.
When I say ‘visionary poet’, ‘visionary poetry’ means:
a poetic experience when you go down the street
and suddenly something makes you see the beauty of life.
That is how I understand ‘visionary poetry’.
Visionary poets would be:
the English Romantics, WB Yeats, T.S. Eliot,
Kathleen Raine and God Bless... in 50 years we will say ‘Gil Dekel’ as well...
The aim of this presentation is to show the development of my PhD through the film.
I want to show you how film helped me develop my PhD.
The first thing I noticed when I started this PhD was that poetic experiences alter everyday reality.
But they also, at the same time, see something above the usual.
Poetic experience; that is, when a poet sees something,
he describes it but he also sees something deeper.
So it's like two realities in the same place at the same time;
So I drew on quantum physics, the theory of relativity.
Because quantum physics tell you a lot about parallel realities.
Parallel realities that exist here, at the same place at the same time.
Quantum physics describes the phenomenon on different levels
If you set your exam, your test from here, you will see the electron as a particle.
If you set your test from here, You see the same electron as a wave,
That's the same element behaving completely differently
depending on the tests; on how you set your tests.
which is perhaps how poets see different realities .
So I made s short film called Quantum Words;
This film is an example of my poetry.
OK, so that was the first year. Sorry that I stopped it there.
That was my first year which is the quest for science.
I was trying to understand through quantum physics the poetic experience.
I then published my article as well on the same issue.
But the problem is that quantum physics, science,
explains something but does not explain the process of the poet.
They will tell you about parallel reality but they will not tell you about the process of the poet himself.
So what I did, I drew on psychology
The great master Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow,
Leonard Shelgold, and I also include Rudolph Steiner here.
I'm trying to understand what is the emotion that motivates the author to create.
From trying to understand the so-called parallel reality, the physical aspect of reality
I'm trying to draw back to the poet and understand what influenced the poet to create.
Because there's emotional intensity
for the beauty and fascination of life within the poet, so I would observe;
which tells us there's something much more deeper than the reality that we see.
The poet doesn't see just the flower or a sense of the beauty of the flower;
but the poet tries to find the light, inspiration, emotion, whatever we call it,
within the mundane daily reality.
That's why they are sometimes defined as people who are building castles in the air;
people who are not related to this reality; they imagine.
I argue that this is not correct.
I've noticed that poets have a unique observation of daily life.
The poet is basically a keen observer of reality.
The poet is an investigator of light within reality.
So I made a film called Unfolding Hearts. Feel free to write any comments.
Poetry examples in that film.
As I was walking down the street,
suddenly I felt light, in me and around me
as if someone pushed me above the water from deep within. I said...
"God!"
He answered, "I'm not God. And any word limits me."
How about 'Lord'? "I'm not your lord nor am I a peasant."
I said, "I know I have all the good in the world but how can I use it?"
He said,
"Play on life. I gave you a great game, so play with it."
Have you ever seen a serious flower?
Does the atom ask the molecule who creates what?
It does not. Instead, they just play together.
That film really tries to show that the poet can
deduce a higher realm from the mundane, everyday life; in the small things.
So about this time in my research, I've observed there are three recurring elements in my progress.
One, there is always nature in my work;
Two is 'inner' look in my work;
and the third thing is 'stoppage' - stopping.
In my film there is only still frames.
You would expect a movie to constantly move; I said no, you have to stop
and look at the still frames.
Let's see what William Wordsworth tells about stoppage; about the act of stopping;
"I would stand, beneath some rock,
Listening to sounds that are the ghostly language of the ancient earth,
or make their dim abode in distant winds.
thence did I drink the visionary power.”
That's Wordsworth in his Prelude, 1805.
This stanza begins with: "I would stand".
"I would stand” could mean two things;
One, it could mean that you would stop physically,
but it could also mean that you stop with your mind,
simply let go of that thought which is constantly running;
You know, when you have constant thought all the time?
Try to stop - that's what the poet does.
This idea of stoppage; if you just stop;
it shows that anyone can become a poet.
In other words, to become a poet all you need to do is not to be born a poet,
but simply to stop, listen to your heart
and watch reality not through your eyes but through your heart.
So if everyone can become a poet,
I said the next thing to do is actually ask what does it mean to be a poet?
How is a poet inspired?
And I made a film called Interview with Authorial Self
where a poet in that film interviews his own Muse, his own source of creativity
and asks that question: how does this work? How does inspiration flow to me?
I'm honoured to introduce my own authorial-Self.
- Thank you very much for joining us. - You're welcome.
The authorial self is my own higher creative self, that which inspires me to write poetry.
I would like to thank you very much for descending from the so-called collective unconsciousness,
the spirit world and coming here today
You see, it is more like coming down with an elevator.
from your higher mind and down to your heart.
When I come to produce poetry, you inspire me to write my poems?
In fact, you receive groups of acknowledgments, from various sources.
Why do you inspire me to write poetry?
So this film is actually a confrontation between the so-called academic self
and the creative, inspiring self.
It's one personality split into two levels of that personality in this film,
I subject myself as a case study for this research.
So the method that I am using is to draw on my own personal experience.
Why? not just because I'm a case study and everybody can give me comments,
because also, with my personal experience, I can tackle that experience as it happens.
When I walked down the street and I have a poetic experience, I know it's there,
because I feel it. I can capture it as it happens.
I don't have to bring it into the laboratory which is not the natural place of the poet;
I don't have to ask that poet to go there and then ask him a questionnaire.
On the contrary, I just do it, as I live, as I know, as a poet.
It also enables me to have a deeper understanding of how it works
You don't have to read what someone else wrote about another poet.
I also interview other poets in Britain in trying to understand how this process works for them
and of course, William Blake... reading the bibliographies of other poets.
OK, thank you very much.