The event was the brainchild of Chilean art collective Casagrande and saw a ‘Rain of Poems’ falling from a helicopter, which hovered above Jubilee Gardens for 30 minutes, distributing 100,000 bookmark-shaped poems over the waiting people.
The Lancelot followspots illuminated the sky, roof tops and the London Eye, and served as the background for the rain of poetry in a poetic reference, picking out the spinning poems from the darkness as they fell through. UK distributor White Light supplied the followspots.
The Robert Juliat Lancelots was zeroed in for the largest poerty event in UK as these are big and bright and easily manoeuvrable, which enables them to quickly react under live conditions. The beams also have far-reaching effect, forming strips of light above County Hall and through and beyond the London Eye.
Casagrande also launched similar events earlier in the cities of Santiago, Berlin, Guernica, Warsaw and Dubrovnik, which have suffered aerial bombardment in the past. According to Bea Colley, Southbank Centre’s Participation Producer for Literature and the Spoken Word, “The Rain of Poems is re-imagining of these tragic events, with a ‘bombing’ of poetry representing a message of peace.”
He further added that Poetry Parnassus is the biggest ever international poetry festival to happen in the UK, with the event having witnessed participation of poets from each of the 204 Olympic nations at Southbank Centre. The event also included 50 poets from Chile and a further 50 up and coming young poets from the UK. Overall, 300 different poems were scattered from the helicopter for the crowds to collect.
