Make Like a Poet

The day is a nationwide celebration of poetry – a chance to break with prose for 24 hours, sharing poetry in imaginative ways through voices, films and pictures.

In 2015, Thirteen Ways and The Space co-commissioned leading poets, artists and actors to make new films and digital art works inspired by poetry.

Professor Stephen Hawking, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Juliet Stevenson and Neil Nunes joined an army of well-known voices who read the poetry of writers from Dylan Thomas to Edna St Vincent Millay, animated through films created by leading artists Laure Prouvost, Bridget Smith and Kathleen Herbert.

Graphic artist Anthony Burrill asked people to dream, speak, love, live, act and think “like a poet”. He asked the public to respond to their recordings in with their own words, pictures and videos on social media, and picked the most creative responses were picked to appear on the Blackpool Illuminations and online.

You can watch some of the videos featured in Make Like a Poet below. In this playlist:

• Stephen Hawking reads Relativity by Sarah Howe. Film by Bridget Smith.
• Samantha Morton reads My Brilliant Image by Hafez. Film by Laure Prouvost.
• Sean Bean reads Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas. Film by Kathleen Herbert.

About this artist

Created by Anthony Burrill and co-commissioned by Thirteen Ways and The Space in partnership with National Poetry Day and the BBC.

Anthony Burrill is a graphic artist, print maker an designer known for his persuasive, up-beat style.

His work features in the permanent collections of the V&A Museum and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York. It has been exhibited in galleries including the Barbican Art Gallery, the Walker Art Center and the Museum of the Image, Breda.

Thirteen Ways is an agency that specialises in curation and communications, delivering creative and strategic projects for creative and cultural organisations and for brands.