Split Screen: Poetry Inspired by Film &  the moving image. Facing pages each feature a poem that interprets themes suggested by the media, and the authors' approaches can be compared and contrasted. I tackled Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, and this poem is set against Mike Dillon's take on blaxploitation icon John Shaft. My haiku sequence "Hakai-no-Renga for Inspector Harry Callahan" addresses what Carl B. Klockars, a professor of Criminal Justice and Sociology, calls the Dirty Harry problem: "The troublesome issue ... is not whether a right choice can be made, but that the choice must always be between two wrongs. And in choosing to do either wrong, the police officer inevitably taints or tarnishes himself." I don't attempt to solve that conundrum, but use the oblique approach of Japanese formalism to let readers make up their own minds. A working title for my contribution was "The Trouble with Harry"... Andy Jackson's anthology will be published by Red Squirrel Press.  has accepted another of my poems for his forthcoming anthology. This time I have plugged a gap in the contents with lines about none other than Emperor Ming from the Flash Gordon series. "Merciless" will be published beside Helen Ivory's poem on the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. |
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