Once I Asked if We Could Take a Rain Check
by Jane Draycott
Look at these gathering clouds
I said and you said but that’s the nature
of the outdoors
that even in the teeth
of the storm, your clothes clinging
to you like desperate children and down
to your naked bones,
it’s in that darkest hour
you’ll see them, the ringing mountains
and the water’s universe.
And yes some small and distant call
inside me did agree
and so I stood bareheaded
in the rain, alone it seemed, exhausted,
sleeping on my feet till daylight came
the hour of the blackbird and the wren,
the returning hour of the shadow-game.
Photo by Mustashrik
About the poet: Jane Draycott is a UK-based poet with a particular interest in audio and collaborative work. Her poetry collection Over (Carcanet) was shortlisted for the 2009 T S Eliot Prize. Nominated three times for the Forward Prize for Poetry, her first two full collections Prince Rupert's Drop and The Night Tree were both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Jane's audio work with Elizabeth James has won several awards including BBC Radio 3 Poem-for-Radio and a London Sound Art Award. In association with the British Film Institute she was a contributor to the Essentially British Mediatheque project (2007) and Simon Barraclough's Psycho Poetica (2010) and Poets on Pasolini: A New Decameron (2013).
She is Senior Course Tutor on Oxford University's MSt in Creative Writing, Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster, and an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund.
About the artist: We have been very excited for the chance to collaborate with internationally renowned and award-winning Film, Animation Director & Creator Mustashrik Mahbub. With his unique attention to detail and intense directorial vision he translated powerful narratives for international clients such as Louis Vuitton, Montblanc, Chloe, Salvatore Ferragamo and UBS. Outside of classic media formats, a variety of live-multi screen visual performances for musician Ed Sheeran were created for his live tours (One and What Do I Know); which have been presented at various concerts since 2013 up to 2018 thus far. A special addition to these live visuals, Castle On The Hill, was debuted with high-industry praise at The BRIT Awards 2017 and the iHeartRadio Awards in Los Angeles. Over these years, he has been featured in Rolling Stone, Campaign, Ad Week, STASH, Shots Magazine, Art Review, D&AD and Bloomberg News, while his animations have been nominated and winning at various film festivals (Annecy, KLIK, Kinsale, Encounters, among others).