Commissioned as a response to an untitled poem by artist Joanna Margaret Paul, Nova Paul’s Still Light is a reflection on the domestic and intimate. Shot in 16mm film, the camera traces around objects and follows light shifting across domestic surfaces, creating fluctuations in colour and flickering shadow. A fittingly tender soundtrack is provided by Nova’s friend and sometime collaborator Bic Runga.
The room is close with mystery
this morning
heavy green folds of velvet curtain
are patterned with light
the sky breaks in panes of almost blue & casts a white mirage upon the
ceiling
mirror filled with things
the white dove-cote outhouse
received from another window
with its dark apertures
a mound of sunlit ivy
a light blue room
caught, held in the
round lid of some vessel
open on the dressing table.
Or so the room seems to be
heavy & punctuated with mystery
in the early stillness & I would
drift out & put on the room, the day
a close & heavy garment
for my pregnancy,
but the obdurate shape by my side
prevents my peaceful
mingling with the folded curtain & the light
the mirror the window the pale day…
Excerpt from untitled poem by Joanna Margaret Paul
Like Love Poems: Selected Poems, Victoria University Press, 2006
(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )