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 Poet and actress Greta Bellamacina spoke to us as she prepared to film with the avant garde Italian director Riccardo Vannuccini and launch her new poetry book 'Who Will Make the Fire'.
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Photography by Skylar Williams&nbsp;

Rendez-Vous with Greta Bellamacina at Eden Rock, we discussed her latest collection of poetry, the publishing house New River Press that she runs with her husband, the poet and conceptual artist Robert Montgomery, and her latest film projects, including with the Italian director Riccardo Vannuccini, and a feature she co-wrote.

JENNY MANNERHEIM: Much of the work in your new collection of poetry, Who Will Make The Fire, uses nature as a reference. Could you describe your connection to nature and use of it within your poems?&nbsp;
GRETA BELLAMACINA: The poems are about what it is to live, to really live well, with nature. To watch the future garden die, again and again, like a wild bird shedding its unimaginable feathers. There is a melancholy to it all, starting again, dreaming up the colours, the softness, the love, then watching it disappear overnight and missing what you barely had. There is a line in the title poem &lsquo;Who Will Make The Fire&rsquo; which reads &ldquo;To live, to Live in the scaffolding of the cathedral,&rdquo; in a certain way we are all living in the scaffolding of the cathedral. Nature is a reminder of that. &ldquo;The blooded flowers in the apple,&rdquo; how the flowers live in the light, that lives inside of you. There is not an escape in the end, it gets you eventually.

JM: You came to St Barth for a stay at the mythical Eden Rock &ndash; St Barths, could you talk a bit about the experience?
GB: Travelling to St Barth from London was a beautiful odyssey, three aeroplanes, three future timezones. In that time your mind wanders and dreams a whole book. By the time you finally arrive in St Barth, the place feels like a true refuge, a place away from the heaviness. A resting heaven. And Eden Rock is a reminder of that very duality of time, because of its position, so close to the airport. You are floating in the sea, and then you see the small aeroplanes land in the near distance: low planes, so close to the sea. I love the surreal positioning of it. I love feeling like I am on the edge of a place &ndash; never truly inside of it, but close enough to stay for a while.

JM: There is something so special about the Caribbean atmosphere, and being in St Barth offers you the opportunity to live with the elements. Did you feel this connection with the natural world during your stay? 
GB: I saw the sunrise every day. I had to do very early morning acting rehearsals on the phone because of the time difference. My routine was to quickly grab my script and phone, so as to not wake the sleeping family, and walk along the beach where the black seaweed had been dragged in from the night&rsquo;s sea. Then I would sit at a little table at the Eden Rock restaurant and watch the light change from pink to grey to blue. I loved watching the hotel come to life before the working of the day. The chairs being dragged out, the beach waiting to decide the course of the day, the seaweed collected.

JM: You work frequently with your husband Robert Montgomery, having co-founded New River Press together in 2017, tell us about your family founded publishing house?
GB: I guess we both lived in the same house surrounded by other poets. Inside this house we all spoke different languages, but all the languages were poetry. Outside the house, these languages seem mad and useless. Even though these poets were heroes of ours there seemed to be no place for them. It was really about making a poet-led publishing house, started by poets, publishing contemporary poetry and hopefully pushing the canon a small way forward. We just launched our latest poetry anthology Albion an Island On The Verge of Madness at The Shakespeare &amp; Company bookshop in Paris. It was their first event in the bookshop since the pandemic, so it felt very special to be reading poetry again with an audience in such an important historical place. The book features poets that we admire such as Niall McDevitt, Sarah Crewe, Deanna Rodger, Raymond Antrobus and others. It traces the emotional, cultural and political life in Britain in our current moment, living in the shadow of Brexit, and in an increasingly polarised society. Asking the question what Albion means in today&rsquo;s Britain?

JM: You&rsquo;re currently filming Things And Other Things, directed by Riccardo Vannuccini, the sequel to Commedia, where you&rsquo;re reprising your role as Irene. How does it feel coming back to this character a second time?
GB: Yes, I am currently filming in Italy, in the Tuscan countryside in winter. The film is set in a post-industrial world, where my character Irene wanders through this strange and empty land. We don&rsquo;t quite know what is real or in her imagination. Or maybe she is already dead. A lot of the locations are abandoned places, hotels, hospitals, a theme park. It feels very special to make a second film with Riccardo Vannuccini. I greatly admire his work in the theatre. And it feels very important to create cinema that has his world of physical-theatre inside of it. It feels like we are making something unique that has been taken out of logic. All we are left with is the silent language of our bodies and minds.

JM: Poetry is an emotionally connected exercise. Do you find that film offers you a similar emotional outlet?
GB: Yes, I think it&rsquo;s about moving closer to one another. Poetry is about saying the indescribable &ndash; to god knows who and god knows when. But it is there like an emergency code whenever you need it. It&rsquo;s the same with acting. The films I like to make are the ones that are portraits of people. Films where the camera sits in a room with someone and watches them slowly revealing themselves to you. When the camera stays beyond the drama, and the viewer is left with the quiet language of the room and the person inside of it. This is when you feel like you understand someone, the stranger is suddenly someone you know, someone familiar.

JM: You seem to bring a lot of poetry not only to your movies but to your life in general. All your films, projects, your house decor and your own personal style seem to have a theme or core idea that is unique to your taste.
GB: I enjoy having a creative dialogue with whatever I am making. It&rsquo;s not about any one thing being more important than the other. It&rsquo;s all important because in the end. It&rsquo;s the small ceremonies you build around yourself that become your life. Day by day, the way you pull the curtains becomes just as important as the way you make a film, or write a poem. These rituals are all a part of the same sacred language.

JM: Tell us about your relationship to beauty and how you make your life magic?
GB: I think it all comes from the garden. The garden with its secret circle sewn in it. Because the garden is a place where weather and life and death meet again and again, but it remains beautiful and mythical. It survives and it&rsquo;s alive. Also, Robert remains my morning star and my night star.

JM: With your family you bought a big old house in the outskirts of London, in Kent, with a dreamlike British countryside garden. Tell us about this project.
GB: Yes, we bought a very old house, a little bit outside of London. We have slowly been restoring it. The garden had been untouched for many years. This year we spent the winter dreaming up a new life for the place, building a kitchen garden and restoring an old Victorian greenhouse. It has been magic harvesting the vegetables. Pulling out the radishes and the onions. Strangely the process seemed to slow time down a bit. I can see through the children&rsquo;s eyes. They yearn for the plants to grow quicker. But what you learn is that everything has its own timing.

JM: Next, you&rsquo;ll be starring in the film "Tell That To The Winter Sea", which you co-wrote. How did you find this experience of writing for film?
GB: The film is in collaboration with Emmy Award winning director Jaclyn Bethany. We became friends a decade ago. I was in some of Jaclyn&rsquo;s early movies. These films were important for both of us. We were learning how to build a language together. How to tell stories in film economically. We wrote Tell That To The Winter Sea over two different time zones, Jacyln in Mississippi and me in England. I would start my day writing ten pages while Jaclyn was sleeping and then Jacyln would read them and write another ten while I was sleeping. Then we would get on long calls and talk about these characters. Eventually we had the script. The film is about female friendship and a reflection of first love, but a decade later set over a hen party weekend. There is a melancholy to the film, because ultimately time casts its own ideas. I play Jo alongside Amber Anderson, who plays Scarlet. The film also has a dance element to it. These dances become a sort of song book to the characters&rsquo; emotional lives. 

JM: You could be described as a shapeshifter in terms of expressing yourself through different artistic mediums. How do you go about choosing the projects you take part in?
GB: Usually it starts with an idea or a conversation. But mostly it&rsquo;s a battle of time. Poetry is urgent to me most days. It&rsquo;s like that Charles Bukowski poem: &lsquo;We have everything and we have nothing&rsquo;, that&rsquo;s how I feel about the way I navigate my projects. Each time I look at a new script or poem I feel like a child, relearning the alphabet.
JM: Is there any artistic media recently that has particularly inspired you?
GB: I have fallen in love with Paula Rego&rsquo;s series of paintings from when she became a carer to her late husband. The Dog Women series inspired one of my poems in the new collection, the first line says: &ldquo;I wonder how many women I have to be in this body of a dog&rdquo;. I am deeply interested in this subject of care and have just finished writing a new script with Jacyln called &lsquo;All Five Eyes&rsquo;, which is set in rural England in the sixties. The film is told through the relationship between two sisters. Together, they have to care for their younger sister. I think Paula&rsquo;s paintings really sum up the obedience, sacrifice and love you need to be a carer. A role beyond what it is to be human, where all wishes drown and rise back like flames.

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 STYLING: Rachel Bakewell&nbsp;
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HAIR: Sophie MacCorquodale at Sloane Salon, London.&nbsp;
ART DIRECTOR &amp; CASTING: Jenny Mannerheim&nbsp;
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR: Gisele Lacoursiere&nbsp;
PRODUCTION: Marinka Burgos-Riaño&nbsp;
LOCATION: Eden Rock - St Barths&nbsp;
Greta Bellamacina is represented by Viva Model Management &amp; Tavistock Wood&nbsp;
'Who Will Make the Fire Will' be published by <a href="https://www.cheeriopublishing.com">Cheerio!</a> the publishing company of The Estate of Francis Bacon.

The Cinema Of Poetry: Greta Bellamacina

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