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There is no more unique being on earth than Eugene Green. After fleeing his native land, which refuses to be called anything other than “barbarian,” you won’t be able to get him to utter a single word of English. He hardly admits that he was born in “New York” He fled to France where he found refuge in the Baroque theatre, with old-fashioned speech, candles, reels and everything you can imagine. Cinema allowed him to work with Fabrizio Rongioni, Natasha Rainier, Mathieu Amalric, Denis Podalides and Olivier Gourmet. He also happens to work with the Dardenne brothers, who produced it.
His cinematic rules are the most surprising: shot for shot, a style in which all connections are made, non-psychological acting, large musical areas. Each film is a story of the meeting of generations, united by sensitivity and a certain lack of understanding of the world. It runs in French and Italian, but also Portuguese and Basque.
The title of your book is very eloquent: Picking up in desolate fields.
I gradually amassed collections that no poetry publisher wanted to publish. I write metered poetry and use some traditional forms such as the sonnet. Not all poems rhyme, but the lines are always theatrical. This work is a selection of my texts taken from all my rejected collections since the beginning of the current century. The title evokes the idea of these desolate fields in which we live and in which we try to find a little meaning and beauty.
Galilee and Galilee…
“To capture is to find what remains of value or beauty in my eyes. The fields are deserted, as if there was a fire and they were left fallow, but some elements remain beautiful and meaningful. Often, I find the desire to write in specific places, for example when I travel, There are even several texts about the Luxembourg Gardens.
Is there a connection with the English watercolourists of the 20th century?
I do not see a direct relationship, because for me the relationship with place is internal. It’s not about painting a landscape, but about saying something about the intimacy that arises in interacting with that place. That’s what I call it“inside places”. one of the poems, Grappa at Café FlorioWhich I wrote at Caffè Florio in Turin, was an opportunity not to contemplate the qualities of grappa, but on time. I feel the weight of the past behind me, but despite all these memories, I still have time to experience other things. It is the joy of the present moment that I expressed in this poem. The watercolor could have been a simple postcard depicting the visual themes of the café.
Is there a reflection of the present and what it represents?
Yes. The present for me is the only real time. All the past was present and all the future will be present. There is no obstacle, as in my last film Wall of the deadWhere back and forth in time makes interactions between the living and the dead possible. This summer, my mother, who was 101, died, and beyond the memories, I feel her very much in my present. This is what I try to capture in the poems, this omnipresence of the present.
Eugene Green captures in desolate fields/ Selected Poems 2004-2021 / September 2023 13 x 21 cm, 160 pages ISBN 979-10-267-1198-819 €
