Chadwick Boseman - d. August 28th 2020

Run forever, hero,
hand in hand with Bast
and Sekhmet, across
the endless veld,
where beautiful men
drop to one knee, bow,
and are held up to the sky.

Read about Chadwick Boseman here

Julian Bream - d. August 14th 2020

Come heavy sleep
and still the strings,
the squeak of frets,
the brush of fingertips,
the memory of timbre:
all else is resonance.

Read about Julian Bream here

Ben Cross - d. August 18th 2020

The screen life affords
just ten lonely seconds
to justify your existence,
to take arrows of desire,
speed, passion, elegance,
and secure them in time. 

Read about Ben Cross here

Wayne Fontana - d. August 6th 2020

After the game concludes

come the impossible years,

the impossible decades,

6-minute slots to deaf ears,

where groovy turns to gravy,

and yet, and yet, you were here.

Read about Wayne Fontana here

C P Lee - d. July 25th 2020

I learned to write this gibberish

in your mindless classroom - 

you, fluent in every language 

(except the serious ones), all

in sub-dialects of Mancunian,

words and music made bonkers,

blown like snuff into the world.

Read about C P Lee here

Alan Parker - d. July 31st 2020

Before the main feature

we sit in our own darkness,

waiting for someone to take us

where the dreamers go: versions

of hell, of history, of childhood,

the places, true and untrue,

beyond the cinema doors.

Read about Alan Parker here

'Rollerball' Mark Rocco - d. July 30th 2020

There is a chapter

in the Grapple Manual

dedicated to brawlers

and pocket battleships.

Its pages are red and blue, 

studded with white stars,

explosions of energy,

character, showmanship.

Read about Mark Rocco here

Sydney Lotterby - d. July 30th 2020

A ragged queue is forming

at your door; three old men,

grocer and boy, a brace of 

supercilious civil servants,

an old lag. They say they're

waiting for you to come home. 

I told them to naff orf.

Read about Sydney Lotterby here

Denise Johnson - d. July 27th 2020

Welcome to Downsville,

where streets are so wide

there are sister brothers

standing on every side,

every soul is 27 forever, and 

even funeral parties are wild.

Read about Denise Johnson here

John Saxon - d. July 25th 2020

I saw you in the fusion

of strength and appetite,

shoulder to broad shoulder

with a long-dead dragon, 

finally arriving at the point

that you will not go beyond.

Read about John Saxon here

Peter Green - d. July 25th 2020

Shall I tell them about your life?

The peerless broken blues,

the anxious nights so black,

the days that strummed you,

whispered through every bad trip

there must be more than this.

Read about Peter Green here

 

Olivia de Haviland - d. July 25th 2020

Dim the lights of this town,

a snake pit draped in tinsel,

reinvent those old stories,

dress the set anew, check

the lens, stay on the face,

the heavy eyes now draining

into lonely black and white.

Read about Olivia de Havilland here

Zizi Jeanmaire - d. July 17th 2020

Les étapes sont définies 

et ne peuvent pas changer,

mais là où il y a mouvement, 

il y a danger,

car qu'est-ce que la vie 

si nous ne pouvons pas danser?

Read about Zizi Jeanmaire here

The steps are set and cannot change,

but where there is movement there is danger,

for what is life if we cannot dance?

Maurice Röeves - d. July 15th 2020

We know you: in the cast,

heavy, or sergeant-major,

neither first name nor last.

Your act was to decöeve,

wear someone else’s story,

trust the watcher to belöeve.

Read about Maurice Roëves here

Jack Charlton - d. July 10th 2020

I found you at the riverbank

to tell you of your own death.

The tranny hissed a commentary:

Italy vs Ireland. You shrugged,

blunt as a thigh-high tackle,

You disturbed me to tell me that?

Read about Jack Charlton here

Ennio Morricone - d. July 6th 2020

Listen! Those soaring buttes

of string, mariachi trumpet, 

the sound of a desert on fire,

of gunshot, gulch and canyon, 

the kind of music that people

make movies to accompany.

Read about Ennio Morricone here

Earl Cameron - d. July 3rd 2020

Many read for your part,

a realist plot simmering

with a deeper history,

but someone had to be

the first to be cast,

the first in the credits.

Read about Earl Cameron here

 

Carl Reiner - d. June 29th 2020

They called you

about a new show of shows,

confident

that you would enter, laughing. 

They asked you 

when will the scripts be ready?

I heard you say

In about two thousand years.

Read about Carl Reiner here

Margarita Pracatan - d. June 23rd 2020

No sombre ceremony

could fete you: that would be wrong,

wrong as the memory

of melody you learned for too long,

rendered unsingable. We

mourn your approximation of song.

Read about Margarita Pracatan here

Ian Holm - d. June 19th 2020

I admired your purity,  

from outside the stadium,

to the middle of another Earth, 

to the coldness of space

- a survivor, always believable

in your unbelievable art.

Read about Ian Holm here