Vertiginous

On 13 July 2018, at the British Film Institute in London, I performed new work written for Simon Barraclough’s multi-poet, multimedia homage to Hitchcock’s classic psychological thriller Vertigo. Click on an image below to scroll through the selection.

In Vertiginous, premiered in the 60th anniversary year of the film’s initial release, six cinephile poets respond to and reinterpret Hitchcock’s profound, disturbing and influential 1958 thriller Vertigo. Devised by Simon Barraclough as a follow-up to the 2010 poetic project Psycho Poetica (also premiered at the BFI and featuring several of the same poets), Vertiginous takes the viewer on a tangential journey through the film, its characters, associations, symbols and emotions. To heighten the experience, Ollie Barrett and Simon Barraclough wrote original music in response to Bernard Herrmann’s vivid score.

The piece was written and performed by Mona Arshi, Simon Barraclough (Psycho Poetica), Dzifa Benson (Psycho Poetica), Isobel Dixon (Psycho Poetica), Chris McCabe (Psycho Poetica) and Chrissy Williams. John Canfield was the technical assistant and the performance was generously supported by the BFI and The Poetry Society.

An extract from my section of Vertiginous, ‘It Can’t Matter To You’ was published in the New Statesman on 24 June 2020.

Vertiginous forms part of my enduring fascination with Alfred Hitchcock’s work, which has found its way into poems written for three Hitchcock-linked collaborations and performances. I’ve no doubt that there will be more in the future… See more on Psycho Poetica (where it all began) and Much Ado About Marnie here.

Click below to hear one of the musical tracks from the show.