“The Wild Whispers Project began with Frog on Water. The poem explores the idea of transforming loss into movement. It was chosen for its accessibility, its short length and storytelling narrative. It’s a once-upon-a-time poem which looks at the past and present, crosses borders, checks binaries, such as day/night, nature/urban, and carries the motif of repeated dysfunctions passed through generations.”
Chaucer Cameron

“The film uses home movie shot in c1950s juxtaposed with recent images using Polaroid cameras. The materiality of the Polaroid was important. The ‘instant party camera’ is not only there to witness events but to become the event. As the home movie revealed a child with fading confidence, the Polaroid revealed a pylon and baby x-ray, a spaceman and diver, paths and roads, a wayside picnic area, desolate farmland and dying trees. The film results in a tense fairy-tale in aptly named, ‘Joy Wood’.”

Helen Dewbery

Frog on water

I used to walk through woodland and wild garlic,
watch leap of frog, gold-green on water.

Touch nose to earth, to hear the inside of the forest,
crumple leaf against a vein that carries signs

of urban concrete. Blood and brick dust
chip away like grinding teeth of children

up-starting with night terrors who in daylight
would daydream in crosshatch, shade not colour.

The used to walk; which enters into all dreams,
terrors of small children transferred across
a generation,
a loss of frog on water.

Chaucer Cameron