Last Night I Saw a Film Called 'Hamnet' - by Ian Bremner

 Last night I saw a film called, ‘Hamnet’, and later that evening listened to ‘I still believe in miracles’, ’I met God at the Supermarket’, ‘ and  ‘When the War Arrives’, all spoken word from a London-based poet called, Lucas Jones. Writing and reciting in real time on social media he capture the cultural moment in an authentic way. He’s also an actor and communicates his take on things naturally, I’m sure reaching a wide audience. 

Hamnet is a film based on a book about a section of the life of William Shakespeare. More accurately the focus of the film is Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, played by Jessie Buckley, who says of her, “Agnes was the full story of what I understand a woman to be. And their capacity as women, and as mothers, and as lovers, and as people who have a language unto their own beside gigantic men of literature like Shakespeare.” 

So the life and work of a poet and his wife who lived in the 16th century inspired Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, which inspired Chloe’ Zhao’s adaptation, and powerful performances of Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, and her beautiful, just-quoted words. Zhao described one moment of Jessie Buckley’s mesmeric acting as, “beyond past, present and future.”

Before going to bed, this all got me thinking about how art is increasingly a fluid, fluent and immediate transmitter of human culture. Technology allowing most of the world’s population to, in Zhao’s words above, go “beyond past, present and future.”

I woke early this morning, (Friday 23rd Jan 2026,) and wrote the following with pencil and paper. As I typed the words onto my computer this evening I was aware that my own small journey yesterday “beyond past, present and future” no doubt pervaded the poem:-

The Contents of Books

I’m just a man with his nose in a book.

A man over there if only you look.

A man who’s appalled by the wars and the crooks

that dominate all but the contents of books.

Sitting in silences (almost like prayer)

witnessing violence that hangs in the air,

I’m verging on wishing that I didn’t care

but deep down I’m seeking what Life brings to bear.

How do I know that my heart’s worth its place 

here on this Earth so in need of true Grace?

Being human is holding a flickering trace

of pure burning Light at the Heart of our race. 

But those wielding power never yield to that flame, 

they let the world burn and all in God’s name.

Yet still I believe that the glow at our Heart 

will gather the ends of the Earth when It starts.

Time, like the tides, with the Moon’s motion moves.

Spirit burns bright as the Soul softly soothes.

What glistens in books, through all music and art,

catches the flame at the core of our Heart.

                                                                           Ian Bremner 

“History is a false memory of what humanity has lived through.

Humans carry the real recollection around their hearts.”          Davi Douglas