Vik Sharma
We’re delighted to share a new climate-themed collaboration between the composer Vik Sharma and our own Toby Litt.
Vik has previously worked with poet and Writers Rebel ally Ruth Padel on 24 Splashes of Denial.
Sea Creatures is an immersive sequence of three poems, words by Toby, music by Vik.
You can listen to the whole e.p. here. But we’re sharing the texts here, with a brief introduction to each from Toby.
This poem came out of an experiment, almost a game. I wanted to write something that rather than going ti-tum-ti-tum, like English poetry often does, used very long (fe-ee-d, se-ee-p) and very short (it, fact) vowel sounds, just as they’re used in Ancient Greek. But as soon as I started I found I was into something much deeper than wordplay. I began write about plankton and other organisms, and their interconnection with one another, and our interconnection with them.
All three of these poems very deliberately use a we voice.
The first time I heard Vik’s setting of my words, I felt completely overwhelmed. It’s like being a whale diving next to some vast sinking ship heading down into the dark.
We lie within the deep flow
feeding constantly. We
seep slowly beneath ice-packs
green like peppermint tea.
We feed and then when full, feed
more until it’d ache
to eat another mouthful.
Float, totally replete.
Sea-creatures stippling ocean
twilights, flickering true
blue fluorescence and glowing
far down into the black.
More join, fleet in the moonlight,
rising up, up, up from where
pressure is a fact, weighing
stress equally on us all.
Waves roam, tickle rocks, beat beaches
raw, roar bitterly, keen
wife-like for a lost sailor,
or spray sorrows inshore
with dull fogginess. Unless
skies soothe, day by day, bays
are bowls of wept tears and spurs
reap harvests of salt grief.
Aeons, unremitting war
between wet and dry, air
and silt, rippling and lava –
moon-forces and core-forms.
We, sea-diplomats, flow free,
here, there, everywhere, seeking
peace, yearning to reconcile
all might within a black night
of calm after-storm, quiet
beat re-treating, repeating
defeat defeat as if it were glory,
and eating difference whole.
I wanted to write something about phones and what we see in them. I hoped to make something beautiful but terrifying. It’s a palindrome, each line repeated, first read forwards and then backwards.
Here Vik’s music is an extremely seductive ambience. I can feel the screenlight running through it.
We, all aglow
lit from below
all palest blue
and me and you
all seeing bliss
in surfaces
and all in all
we always fall
into a gaze
for days and days
all blue, all cool
our swimming pool
all swimming in
all mirroring
we drown distress
in gorgeousness
we drown distress
all mirroring
all swimming in
our swimming pool
all blue, all cool
for days and days
into a gaze
we always fall
and all in all
in surfaces
all seeing bliss
and me and you
all palest blue
lit from below
we, all aglow
Sometimes I look at what I own and think, why? Why all this stuff? ‘The Things’ – a sonnet – came out of that why.
Vik’s setting is mild but menacing. Perfect.
The things which have been with us for a while.
The things it only took moments to befriend.
The things that force us to smile.
The things we hope to keep until the very end.
The things that tell us You are living now.
The things which we ignore for months and months.
The things we’re very slowly learning how
to work. The things we only ever used once.
The things we accidentally left behind,
then rushed back to find, unmoved, unharmed.
The things we’d save in a house-blaze. The things
we can’t even perceive. The things we kind
of hate but tolerate. The things we know are armed.
The things we will exchange for better things.
Toby Litt is a writer, academic and activist. He has published novels, short story collections, non-fiction and poems. His work was included in Carcanet New Poetries VII. His novel Patience was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Toby’s most recent book is A Writer’s Diary – and his diary continues to run. He is a member of English Pen and editor of the Writers Rebel website.
Vik Sharma is a composer and script-writer based in London. He’s been involved in projects that have won and been nominated for several awards including BAFTA, Emmys, Cannes Lions, BIMA and the D&AD Awards. Sharma began his musical career as a member of the Asian Undergound band ‘Joi’ signed to Peter Gabriel’s label Real World. After a career in advertising and digital, he pivoted into film and television composition, collaborating extensively with Stephen Merchant, writing soundtracks to his film Fighting with My Family (which debuted at #1 in the UK Box Office), the Emmy nominated HBO series Hello Ladies and three series of the Bafta winning international hit An Idiot Abroad which also featured Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington. Sharma also wrote the soundtrack to the Emmy award winning series Hoff the Record, a mockumentary featuring David Hasselhof and was series composer on Clarkson’s Farm.
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