Poet Becomes Screenwriter

Today we look at a young poet, an emerging artist of words. Yes, I said “Poet.”

Poet? One who makes rhymes? Can this be a way of life? Can anyone make a living writing poetry? Or is it solely for pure personal satisfaction?

Are poems still relevant? Our childhood begins with rhymes, the ancient plays were extended poems, and all songs are poems. Poems are mind songs in word form, flowing and revealing as they go. (Soon we’ll look at some of her poems and you can judge for yourself.)

Think of poetry as a gateway to all other writing. In their simplicity, they are profound. In their complexity, they are subliminal.

Sam Thomas is this young poet. She thinks of herself as a writer and world traveler. When you read her poems, you see that assimilating many cultures has depended her lyrical sensitivity, that is certain. When I spoke with her she was traveling…

“Am on the road now, been skipping across Ha’penny bridge and across Dublin. Now in Waterford then Cork but will take a quick jaunt to Aran Islands from tomorrow til Monday. Never seen that part of Ireland.”

Acclaimed for several of her poems, Sam was invited to Oxford University in creative writing, and is now writing her second screenplay as well. (Her given name is Samantha, but she prefers just “Sam”. )

I asked, “How did you begin writing?”

“As far as my writing,” she said, “I’ve always done it and I guess knew I was good at it from about 10. Dad always encouraged me with it, even from that age.”

Her father Mark, a brilliant engineer who had served in the Peace Corps, took their family to live many countries, worldwide, while she grew up. Tragically, he died very prematurely, of pancreatic cancer when Sam was hardly more than a girl. Sam’s poetry has remembered him, as her writing evolved to embrace her ongoing life.

I asked her, “When did you know you would spend your adult life writing full-time?”

“I got serious about it about 4 years ago, and moved to Ireland to do the Poet’s House program, ended up teaching at Uni there too. Now am at University Oxford. They invited me to do my Masters in Creative Writing. ”

I knew this invitation was based on her poems. And we will see some of those poems soon, right after the interview.

“What besides poems, any other writing?”

“I’ve written a few scripts, a couple stories, mostly poems— all really in the last couple years.”

“Scripts, like screenplays for movies?”

“They’re filming one now, yes.”

“What do you really hope to achieve through your writing?” I asked.

“What do I want from it? Well all those things sound fine. I do it because it makes me feel good and creates a sense of belonging for me which, you can imagine, was a nebulous thing in my upbringing. Also, I’m pretty bloody inarticulate but when I write I can actually fricken communicate. I’d just like to marry ‘it’ and live happily ever after, if that makes sense.”

Inarticulate? “It sounds almost as if your writing is a very dear friend of yours.”

“I don’t know yet, but maybe your writing becomes your family… and some of it is for making money. and some of it is for love… and some of it takes care of the garbage or entertains you or stabs you in the back, then sings you to sleep.”

Always surprising, her answers. With the sharp intuits of a poet. And she has a hunger to educate herself, to learn, to devour knowledge.

Sam first earned a dual major in a BA English and BA Fine Arts, Sculpture, from the University of Florida, Gainesville. Next, she earned her MA— Research in Creative Writing at Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland. (Her focus was on the history of sugar, and the cruel trade based upon slavery and colonial exploitation.)

She was then invited to read for a post-graduate degree at the University of Oxford, where she is currently writing both new poems and now screenplays.

I asked her the cliché question, the one at the heart of all good writing: “What is the source of your inspiration?”

She answered, “I write from my circumstance of never having a particular ethnic identity and the dualities that such an experience incurs… namely a continual process of recognition, rejection and forgiveness… that, on this shrinking planet, is becoming more and more relevant to everyone.”

“Do you continue to study, while writing?” I asked.

“Of course.” Apparently, she never stops learning. “I’ve started translation with Farsi as part of the work I want to do for my final portfolio in poetry with Jamie McKendricks. Before I left Ox I started working with Dr Homa Katouzian and Dr Firouza Abdullaeva of the Oriental Studies dept. I used to speak Persian fluently as a kid, all gone now but would love to still work with it. One of my mentor’s for ages now has been Colman Barks, so I’ve ben very fortunate.”

“How did you learn to write screenplays for movies?”

“Oh, I was asked to adapt a famous poem to film, a poem I happened to love, so I did. Got a hold of Syd Field’s screenplay book and Robert McKee’s ‘Story’ from a friend in Dublin. When I write a screenplay time just stops. I look up and the day is gone and there is all this writing done… there in front of me.”

As promised, here are some of Sam Thomas’ poems— can you guess what part of the world inspired each of them?

Pike

I wasn’t going to kill anything
while wading through that swamp trash forest
but then you found me
and I rescued you
from some stench of a stream
and as you lay swooning
from the heavy bank
my only blind thought
to save us
was do it
do it again
do it
until you were just
dirty tinsel
on my hook and I
was in love.

Alien Pastoral, Montauk N.Y.

Last night, Kristina, the most incandescent
of the Lithuanian food runners decided to
elope with the security guard Ken Bailey.
All along the beach fires blazed orange turning
the sand near cobalt the moon and air were
so clear. Five dollars to Stella’s party and the
Sangria and Rolling Rock flowed. Kelly locked
herself in the Corsica again with the all the cocaine
and you lied to Lena and stayed with me.
We all watched as Eamon turned a vat of
Grey Goose into a livid monster blue martini
over at the Shark Shack and were just
starting to groove when Sorana called Lukas
a stupid spic for saying the Romanians were
a bunch of gypsies. You could hear them brawling
in the dirt lot behind the motel till dawn.
By then Liam had grated a raw ‘V’
into his forehead body-surfing and everyone blacked-out
each unquestionably in love with the other.

Verlaine

Come on let’s play a game I lose. I’m left lying here alone
And beauty does not play. The version of this I’m thinking
Of: You delete the mending needle and booze it up over
My sensible shoes. You gave it all over to some benediction,
Some pope of the after hours and now I’m the foolish virgin
Bride who waits to see her midnight robber beau come home and
Defile her. When you finally stop for nothing I’ll make you eggs Cro-Magnon.

Your escape is starry-eyed but I’ll never let you get too far beyond the
Bastards at the gate. And you’d never even know you made it if
You did. How many times did we say this would never happen.

Oh, where I want to live! And how I want to envelope each sigh to you.
I fold them in my sheets. My sheets are full with them already.
If you knew the scent I could arouse in you, you may have come in like a lotus.

Instead I lie beside myself. Beside herself. I’ll write to you from now
On. Because it’s the wailing I’m trying to stop from happening. If I
Bestow it to the sea your ships will enter each gale in fours with their
Torn elder masts and planks of beseech. I couldn’t watch. I prefer to feel you,
I feel you like a hundred empty shells in me. My belly fills with your
Tide and each one chokes contentedly. You leave and they bake in the heat
Of madness. I’ll care for them and believe them. My beach is as
Wide as your storm.

Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag

The always shirtless, bibbed in nicotine
“old goat,” my mother snorted.
Exported from Anglia, repatriated
from India then mystifyingly locked like a tick
onto the volcanic haunch of Soufriere’s coast.

His small dry beach house was our home
once he was gone. He would tell the story.
My father’s still hairless face jealously
relishing each hyperbole suspecting maybe
he would never become so long in the tooth.

… It was the influenza gave Him a taste for it…
bodies in the ravines after the war
… even snuk in windows in the night.
Killed one hundred and twenty-six…

The lizards slid right down into
the house then and sat up on the chairs
so dad stacked the rocks in tiers half way
up the dry mountain behind us and the
lizards stayed in the lime trees.

Then with the rest he stacked a jetty
straight out into the black green bay that he
and Ashille could launch from with their tanks
and spears each day, floating lucidly over
the urchins sniggering between the rocks below.

Before Soufriere he couldn’t even swim.
But with the almost witchy Midwestern fear
of sea reformed he began to hunt alone
usually returning with whatever we wanted
from its blue brave wilderness.

Once even finding a small breathing
space in a cave twenty feet below
with glowing yellow patches on the
black walls. That’s too far, mom said
when she heard, that’s just too far.

Sick with flu for a fortnight, I had days to watch
him from my top bunk slip into the water
and scout out from the broken jaw of beach
before submerging. If I saw him bob up again
I’d call out to my mother bowed at the bright sink,

stars streaming from her head
a patience preparing, she never looked
and I could never catch a glimpse of him emerging,
only hearing the soft tink of gear against
the rocks and sandy padding of feet
once he was already in the house.

Morne Grande

Before long she was finding her own way easily
no one need walk with her. And the wrath came
more quickly and thoroughly as she was alone.
Now, she was not the thin lost child everyone
had fussed over and what she had become,
so doll-like and painted so flagrantly healthy,

was something the men would stop aiming
their blows to watch walking by. And that day
through the cane fields swinging hot with blades
it was what they said that sliced her as she made
her way and they taunted, “Not such a long way
now, eh dou-dou?” The women’s eyes flickering

in a different, sharper way from the men’s own.
Like her they’d be in douillete by that evening
for harvest mass. She was going for madras to finish
her jupe and get the red ribbons for threading
through lace in the sleeves and neck of her chemise.
It would be the first grande robe she had sewn

for her own. Watching herself in the mirror
at the shop she couldn’t help but superimpose
the graise d’or on her neck or in her thick hair
the zepingues temblants with her aunt’s tete-en-l’air
pinning it up. And to top (she paid her bill) the splendid clothes
a saffron tinted mouchoir and zanneau chenille (a matador’s
guile), swinging heavy and sweet as dove’s eggs
from her skillful ears.

Husbandman

The eclipse was widening
over the valley and Apollo
aimed the stolen telescope
at it and cooed huskily.

Angelique snatched it from him
handing it to Jupiter
without bothering to peer
up at the thickening silver.

“When we go den?” she asked,
“Is long enough we waitin’
for Jacko and dem.
Let’s go now while it dead dark.”

“Listen woman, Jacko and dem
have more dan half de guns, we
only have five between us now.”
“So? We still have dese.”

She lifted the curved machete
blade between them, “Is cane
only you can cut?” The shadow
iris sat stiffly over the glow.

They heard the jalousies below
clatter shut and saw him
himself staring up at the sky
from the glacee his pale bald head

tilted up at the darkened saucer.
“Let’s go,” Angelique said,
“Is him I want.” The others
fell in line behind her. Jupiter’s
band went around left while Apollo’s
came down along the tinkling river.

After reading her poems, I was moved, and amazed. Much depth from one so young.

I asked, “Why do you want to write screenplays, when you’re beginning to be recognized for your poetry?”

“Well, poetry is my writing love, a few good poems are what’s got me all the way over Europe and kicking around Oxford. Not too shabby. Novels will be the big test: how real
can you be, how much stamina do you have and can you still keep it all relevant.”

“What’s happening with the screenplays, anything getting made?’

“I have a script out right now that they will start filming in a couple weeks, short film, artsy. I will go over to Cork to check out how it’s going in a few days. That ones for love, no
money in it — just a sweet kiss. The director/producer well connected and will enter it in berlin zebra contest next year.”

“Writing movies presents no conflicts with your poetry?” I asked.

“I like film, I used to love it but once I realized I wouldn’t be making them myself, too much other stuff to do, I wasn’t all mad about it. I have no problem pimping out
screenplays, if I should be so lucky, to keep the poetry virgin, if I should be so lucky. But of course there must be standards, Faulkner’s right, you must always be getting better.”

As a poet, Sam Thomas has climbed the academic ladder, empowering herself with degrees in the visual arts as well as in writing programs. And she keeps learning.

Now she is a working poet and a screenwriter as well! Her talent— and her evolving education— have opened the whole world to her!

• Related Posts
• Bookmark
• Tags

Comments are closed.