Suzie Hanna

Poem & Voice Sally Bayley
Sound Phil Archer
Director/Animator Suzie Hanna

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of Anne Hathaway in summer 2023, this poem was commissioned for publication by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The composite personality of the faithful and apprehensive Anne references a range of Shakespeare’s female characters as well as Tudor Royalty.

The opening quote is Shylock’s from ‘The Merchant of Venice’. Production techniques include animating flat puppets using an antique bottle as a lens and shadow play of hands and objects set into animated textures created under the camera with oil paints.

Selected for Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival 2023.

Finalist at 11th Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition 2023.

Helios Sun Poetry Festival Mexico 2023/24.

Poem Stevie Smith
Voice Glenda Jackson
Sound Phil Archer
Animation Suzie Hanna
Advisors Sally Bayley & Noreen Masud.

Glenda Jackson provides the voice of poet Stevie Smith in this animated interpretation of her extraordinary 1950’s poem ‘The Blue from Heaven’.

Suzie Hanna has adapted and animated the poet’s own drawings to communicate her rueful, wistful, comic, and melancholy themes, with music and sound design by Phil Archer.

Selected for Athens Animfest March 2019, The Equinox Film Festival in Palmer, Alaska March 2019, Newlyn International Film Festival April 2019, Kinodrome at Folk East Festival August 2019, Winner Best Editor Strand x Nitehawk Lit on Film Festival New York 2019, Finalist, Special Mention at Celtic Animation Film Festival 2019, Love Story Film Festival London 2020, ReelPoetry TX Festival Houston 2020, Cadence Video Poetry Festival Seattle 2020, Manchester Lift-Off Film festival 2020, High Peak Independent Film Festival 2020, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin 2020

Poem Bill Manhire
Voice Stella Duffy
Sound Phil Archer
Director/Animator Suzie Hanna

Commissioned for Fierce Light by Writers Centre Norwich, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and 1418NOW. Screened at Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2016. Voiced by Stella Duffy, with Sound Design by Phil Archer.

Mud and and pigment animation interpreting Bill Manhire’s poem about tragic death of youths in WW1, comprised of 14 short epitaphs for unknown NZ soldiers killed at the Somme, and for unnamed refugees drowning as they flee from wars now, 100 years later.

Selected for Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2016, O Bhéal Poetry Film Festival 2016, Zebra Poetry Film Festival 2016, Interfilm 32nd International Short Film Festival Berlin 2016, 14th London Short Film Festival 2017, Finalist in AltFF Alternative Film Festival Toronto March 2017, Short Waves Festival 2017 Poland, Lyrical Visions Festival New Zealand 2019.

Poem by Sally Bayley
2023

To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the death of Anne Hathaway in summer 2023, this poem was commissioned for publication by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The composite personality of the faithful and apprehensive Anne references a range of Shakespeare’s female characters as well as Tudor Royalty.

Production techniques include animating flat puppets using an antique bottle as a lens and shadow play of hands and objects set into animated textures created under the camera with oil paints.

Poem by Vicki Feaver

Published in ‘I Want! I Want!’, Cape Poetry, Jonathan Cape, London 2019
ISBN 9781787331815.

The poet reckons with time and ageing as she reflects on her relationship with a tree. Mixed-media animation, made using black wrap, painting and composited collage.

Poem by Andrew Motion
2001

Poetry & Voice: Andrew Motion 
Animation: Hayley Winter & Suzie Hanna
Composer: Sebastian Castagna 
Copyright 2001

This highly compressed poem references the rail journeys the poet took to visit his dying mother. It brings together a meditation on landscape and history of the railways with his grief. Mixed-media animation using 16mm film rushes, salt, paint and early digital collage compositing.

The Lines was selected for numerous festivals including Manchester Poetry Festival and Hamburg Animation Festival, it was part of a programme curated by the British Council ‘Shooting Rhymes and Cutting Verses’ which was shown all over the world to promote UK Culture.

The Gene used it as visuals for a concert tour and it was shown in cinemas as part of the Sonimation project which was instigated by Suzie Hanna in collaboration with Sonic Arts Network and Digital Arts Network in 2001.

Poem by Stevie Smith

Director/Designer/Animator Suzie Hanna
Poem Stevie Smith
Sound Design Phil Archer
Voice Glenda Jackson
Vocal effects Felix Ospino Archer
Based on drawings by Stevie Smith
Advised by Noreen Masud & Sally Bayley

Glenda Jackson provides the voice of poet Stevie Smith in this animated interpretation of her extraordinary 1950’s poem ‘The Blue from Heaven’.

Suzie Hanna has adapted and animated the poet’s own drawings to communicate her rueful, wistful, comic, and melancholy themes with music and sound design by Phil Archer.

With kind permission of Hamish MacGibbon for the Stevie Smith Estate.

Selected for Athens Animfest March 2019, The Equinox Film Festival in Palmer, Alaska March 2019, Newlyn International Film Festival April 2019, Kinodrome at Folk East Festival August 2019, Winner Best Editor Strand x Nitehawk Lit on Film Festival New York 2019, Finalist, Special Mention at Celtic Animation Film Festival 2019, Love Story Film Festival London 2020, ReelPoetry TX Festival Houston 2020, Cadence Video Poetry Festival Seattle 2020, Manchester Lift-Off Film festival 2020, High Peak Independent Film Festival 2020, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin 2020.

Presentations include: ReLit Foundation Oxford 2018, Oxford Literary Festival 2020.

Dir. Suzie Hanna & Tom Simmons 
Copyright 2010 
9m40s

Letter to the World was commissioned by the Emily Dickinson International Symposium 2010. The film is inspired by Dickinson’s experiments with hybridity and dual identities, by which the poet creates a vast imaginary landscape with an extraordinary microscopic perception of nature. 

The film was produced from animated silhouettes of the American actress Elisabeth Gray integrated with stop-motion object and shadow theatre. It includes a rich supply of contemporary artistic and cultural influences referenced in Dickinson’s poetry and letters.

 Screenings and presentations include:

Emily Dickinson International Symposium, Oxford University (2010) 
6th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival, Berlin (2012)

Sylvia Plath Symposium Indiana University, Bloomington, USA (2012)

Poem Hart Crane
Voice Tennessee Williams
Dir. Suzie Hanna & Tom Simmons & Producer Sally Bayley 
Copyright 2013 
3m 18s

‘Proem’ is a short animated representation of Hart Crane’s iconic ‘Proem’ from his epic work ‘The Bridge’.

Suzie Hanna animated the film using hand cut stencils imitating some graphic aspects of contemporaneous 1920s New York artists. She also referenced Vorticism to capture vertiginous aspects of the verse. The voice of Tennessee Williams, who was an ardent admirer of Crane, is taken from a 1960 recording.

Tom Simmons has built this into a resonant dramatic soundscape which interprets the materiality of the bridge, the surrounding land and waterscape and the ‘prayerful’ qualities of the Proem. The film is part of research into representation of poetic metaphor, between Sally Bayley, Tom Simmons and Suzie Hanna: their article Thinking Metaphorically and Allegorically: A Conversation between the fields of Poetry, Animation and Sound was published in Spring 2014 in the Journal of American Studies.

Selected in 2014 for Filmpoem Festival Antwerp Belgium, Laugharne Castle Poetry & Film Festival Wales, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Berlin, Sound & Vision Festival, Norwich UK, and for Official Competition in Ottawa International Animation Festival Canada, FLEXIFF Sydney Australia, Liberated Words Festival, Bristol (won first prize for music and sound and second prize for best editing), Visible Verse Festival, Vancouver, Canada, and Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition at IndieCork Film Festival, Eire.

In 2015 it has been selected for the 12th London Short Film Festival, the 8th British Short Film Festival in Berlin, the Panorama programme at Melbourne International Animation Festival, PoetryFilm 2 at Kosmopolis CCCB Barcelona, Marathon screening at Athens Animfest, New York Short Film Fridays Festival, and Best of Zebra 2014 at the POETRY festival Munster, Germany 2015. 

Based on the poem ‘Man-moth’ by Elizabeth Bishop

Sound Design Phil Archer 
Copyright 2011 
2m30s 

Mixed media stop motion animation inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem Man-moth, with set design influenced by the Merz constructions of Kurt Schwitters, whose collage approach to image creation was admired by the poet, who recognised the reflection of this technique in her own work. 

Screenings and presentations include:

Elizabeth Bishop Centenary 2011 EB Projected & The Great Village Festival 2011 Nova Scotia, Canada

REPRESENTING SYLVIA PLATH (Cambridge University Press, 2011) brings together an interdisciplinary set of essays on the poet and artist Sylvia Plath with uniquely commissioned responses to her work – all performed in the Purcell Room at the South Bank Centre – by artists Suzie Hanna, Kate Flatt, Elisabeth Gray and Stella Vine.

Includes a Chapter by Suzie Hanna.

Music video commissioned by Hannah Sanders to accompany the release of her first album Charms Against Sorrow (Sungrazing Records), February 2015.

For more information see Hannah Sanders website.

Hannah’s silhouette was combined with time-lapse landscapes and animated elements including drawn birds and fish and real flowers.

BBC Ideas Commission 2020 ‘The Hidden Meanings in Music Hall Lyrics’. This film was the result of a conversation with Jude Montague about modern poverty, and how that subject was reflected in songs from the music hall era.

Visit The Hidden Meanings in Music Hall Lyrics on the BBC website.

Commission From Cambridge Creative Encounters to communicate the role of Nano Materials in reducing the effects of Climate Change, made in close collaboration with a nano materials scientist.

This film is now part of an Open University syllabus for Supporting Climate Action through Digital Education.

I have played music with my siblings since childhood. I have had a very varied musical life in jazz, experimental, folk and country bands, and continue to play in a family band the Marisca Trio.

Photo: Boo Marshall

Listen to samples of our music on Bandcamp.

The Marisca Trio play dance tunes from Shetland, America, France, Ireland, Canada, Eastern Europe etc. performing for ceilidhs and public events, as well as singing songs from many sources and eras.

Click for The Marisca Trio Facebook and Instagram pages.

From Music Hall performances with No Name Street Theatre in the eighties to a BBC commission for a film about Music Hall in 2020, Bobby and Suzie Hanna have a strong interest in the tradition and continue to perform these songs.

Bobby and Suzie Hanna as Les Deux Moustiquaires perform music for the annual performances of Sacré Thêatre.

For more information, see the Sacré Thêatre website.

Commissioned by Norwich Cathedral December 2011 and projected onto sharkstooth gauze in one of the massive Norman arches in the nave, this silent meditative animation was inspired by Duccio’s ‘London Madonna’ and Richard Crashaw’s ‘Shepherds’ poem.

It ran on a loop every day for a month over the Christmas festival.

Freda Starr’s Stereoscope was made as an installation in the church for Cley Contemporary 2018.

It was inspired by a 1980’s interview with Freda where she described her experience of being trapped in the village shop on the night of the 1953 flood.

Experimental film of windblown plants edited into moving ‘wind mandalas’, made during lockdown at Wheatfen.

Suzie curates short films on Nature themes for the annual Micro Kino at Raveningham Sculpture Trail.

For more information see the Raveningham Sculpture Trail wesbite.

Collaborating on Emily Dickinson performances and workshops with Dr Nicole Panizza, Dr Sally Bayley and Dr Hannah Sanders.

Photo by Jony Russell.

Collaborating with Dr Jude Montague and Nano materials scientist Nicolas José.

Mixed media stop motion animation inspired by Elizabeth Bishop’s poem Man-moth, with set design influenced by the Merz constructions of Kurt Schwitters, whose collage approach to image creation was admired by the poet. She reflected this technique in her own work.

Screened at ‘EB Projected’ the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary & The Great Village Festival 2011 Nova Scotia, Canada.

16mm film stop-motion animation

Highly Commended at Chicago International Short Film Festival 1999.

Selected in over thirty international festivals from Brazil to Scandinavia, and shown most recently at Glastonbury Festival 2011. Broadcast as part of the First Take Series on ITV. Screened in Audience Choice selection for British Animation Awards 2000.

Privately commissioned film made in a Dolls’ House with puppeteer Joy Haynes.

Rod puppet

Design based on a drawing by the poet Stevie Smith.

Animated object scenery for production of The Tinderbox, Norwich Puppet Theatre.

30 second version of an animated background I created for Norwich Puppet Theatre for a production of The Tinderbox.

All the objects are made of metal which was a theme for the show, following the classic story of the soldier, the princess, the witch, and the dogs that guard the copper, silver and gold treasure. I photographed kitchenware and then re-photographed with LED lights inside the objects, creating a collage of these images for the scenario.

Invented and created for presenting the literary memoir ‘Girl with Dove’ by Sally Bayley, Animarginalia are short, rapidly created sketch animations made in response to words in a body of text as a way of exploring their meaning as a form of temporal marginalia.

© Suzie Hanna 2018

Suzie runs interactive workshops on developing Object Narratives.
See Workshops

‘Fragmented Realities’: Experiments in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry Through Music and Moving Image’ – Performance and Panel Discussion.

This was an improvised, multi-disciplinary live performance that invited the audience to consider the authentic temporal experience of a day in the life of the American poet Emily Dickinson. The performance included material from her fragment poems as well as classical piano and lyrics of popular songs from the poet’s own music portfolio.

Performance by Hannah Sanders, Nicole Panizza, Suzie Hanna and Sally Bayley at Anteros Norwich in May 2022.

Dr Nicole Panizza and Dr Hannah Sanders performing ‘In Other Motes of Other Myths’ with improvised visual projections by Professor Suzie Hanna in Paris 2016.

This first improvised performance was commissioned for the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference ‘Emily Dickinson and the Responsive Body -Disruption, Interruption and Temporality’.

The collaborators have also performed and run workshops on these themes for Oxford Literary Festival and the ReLit Summer school at Worcerster College, Oxford.

Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge

Materials: Card and paint, stencils registered under the rostrum and painted in place frame by frame.

Materials: Pencil, paint, salt and domestic objects.

Live shoot on 16mm film then cutting up and gluing individual frames onto 35mm spacer with printed adhesive acetate, indian ink, vegetable colourings and nail varnish.

Hannah’s silhouette is combined with time-lapse landscapes, moving shadows of old glass and animated elements including drawn birds and fish and stop-motion animation using flowers.

The workshops I run are inclusive and can be designed for different age groups and interests.

This image is from a brainstorming session for mixed-media film production.

This workshop helps you to develop visual metaphors, exploring possible relationships between objects to create new stories, individually and collaboratively.

It is based on object theatre principles, using tableaux and lighting in response to personal and traditional narratives.

Inspired by the early journals of Naturalist Ted Ellis, and also the analysis of other historical and contemporary Nature journals, this interactive workshop encourages participants to test a range of techniques for recording and communicating their observations of the natural world.

This workshop includes the study of ballad lyrics written from rural and urban perspectives, all of which depict Nature as a paradigm for human desire and aspiration.

Participants write and perform their own ballad poem or song and may also create a monoprint broadsheet illustration.

(Image is an embroidery by Suzie’s Grandmother, Alice Ellis)

To learn more about Ted and his legacy visit the
Wheatfen Nature Reserve website.

Ted Ellis was born in1909 and started keeping detailed Nature Journals at the age of 14, writing and illustrating regular newspaper articles on Natural History subjects from the age of 18 until his death in 1986.

Suzie runs interactive workshops on The Naturalist’s Journal. Talk she gave for the Windmills Trust in 2023.

Please contact her if you are interested in a talk or a workshop.

Suzie published her mother’s memoirs in 2011; ‘From Osborne House to Wheatfen Broad: Memoirs of Phyllis Ellis’ by Pete Kelley.

The text is edited from recorded conversations with Phyllis who had a great command of the English language, detailing her vivid memories of most of the 20th century spent in East Anglia and London.

Please contact if you wish to purchase a copy.

Short animation of Ted’s school essay from 1923 ‘Observations of the Sky’ made in collaboration with Jude Montague for screening at Raveningham Sculpture Trail 2020.

Animating Poetry: Whose line is it Anyway? Creation and Critique of shared language in poetry animation, International Journal of Film and Media Arts Vol.4 No.2 Truth of Matter 

Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge – Animating Poetry and Research-Led Practice in The Poetics of Poetry Film, Sarah Tremlett, Intellect Books, ISBN 9781789382686

Afterword : Fierce Light : Poets respond to the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme Gatehouse Press ISBN 978-0-9934748-2-8

 Thinking Narratively, Metaphorically and Allegorically through Poetry, Animation and Sound, Journal of American Studies, Cambridge University Press Vol 47, No 4, 2013

Adolescent Plath – The Girl Who would be God in Representing Sylvia Plath edited by Dr Sally Bayley &Tracy Brain, Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-0-5119026-9-7

Composers and animators – the creation of interpretative and collaborative vocabularies, Journal Of Media Practice, Vol 9 Issue 1, Intellect Books

Poetry Animation: Visual Symbolism, Representation & Materiality, & Poetry Animation Sonic & Lyric Design Poetry Film in Conversation, Poetry Film Live Events 2023

There Comes a Warning Like a Spy: improvised animation within live musical performance of Emily Dickinson’s folio and fragment poems, Experimental and Expanded Animation Conference, UCA 2019

Animating Poetry: Whose line is it Anyway? Creation and Critique of shared language in poetry animation, Ecstatic Truth IV Symposium, Westminster University 2019

 In other Motes, In other Myths-Emily Dickinson and the Responsive Body – Disruption, Interruption and Temporality – EDIS International Conference Cité Internationale Universitaire Paris 2016

The Blue From Heaven – We All Have These Thoughts Sometimes – A conference on the work of Stevie Smith, Jesus College Oxford 2016

Tripwire: War Wounds, Survival and Memory in the Twentieth Century Co-presented with Dr Alisa Miller, First World War Network: First World War Commemoration and Memory, Manchester IWM 2016