I Found It at the Movies: An Anthology of Film Poems

Incontestably movies play an important role in the lives of most of us, poets included. Movies, all kinds of movies, are part of our common experience. For some of us, it’s occasionally difficult to draw a sharp line between movie and life. On a car trip through the Canadian Shield some years ago, a friend of mine commented on how paintings by members of the Group of Seven organized her view of the landscape. I think the same could be said of the impact movies can have on our perceptions.

Ruth Roach Pierson

If movies are dreams, then these poems about cinema are the dreams dreamt by the dreams – oneiric experience piled high, deliriously drizzled golden, twizzled sweetly and carried into the dark! Reading them I feel I’m peeling back an extra pair of eyelids. This collection takes you closer to films than you ever been before.

Guy Maddin, filmmaker

We go to the movies in search of a certain practical poetry, the kind that enlarges our perspective of the world or simply entertains us. It’s often assumed that we are empty vessels into which the art flows. And yet Ruth Roach Pierson’s fine anthology of film poems, I Found It at the Movies, proves that the process magnificently works in both directions. The writers here emote eloquently about the movies, from Apocalypse Now to The Wizard of Oz, and all aspects of the cinematic form. There is passion in this poetry, projected at 24 frames per second upon the mind’s eye, and I urge you to engage with it.

Peter Howell, Movie Critic, The Toronto Star

Because the experience of movies is so widely shared and so deeply personal, the poems in this wonderful anthology – hilarious, poignant, thoughtful, shrewd and romantic – speak vitally and openly to all of us. And more than that: read as a collection, these poems confront us with the fact that movies are not merely an escape from reality but a powerfully influential feature of our world, a shared projection of dreams whereby, for better or worse, we shape our collective identity and the direction of our history.

John Steffler, Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2006-2008), Griffin Prize shortlist