Portrait of the Artist as an Island Flower – A Film by Alan Fentiman | Poem by Linda France
Portrait of the Artist as an Island Flower is a short Film Poem by Alan Fentiman featuring a poem by Linda France.
This short poetic film reimagines a moment in the life of 19th-century botanical artist Margaret Rebecca Dickinson, who left behind hundreds of exquisite plant portraits, but almost nothing of herself. With no surviving portrait and scant personal record, poet Linda France conjures her spirit through a lyrical response to Dickinson’s 1874 field trip to Holy Island.
The poem, Portrait of the Artist as an Island Flower, was first published in Waves and Bones (NCLA, Newcastle University, 2018) and draws on Linda’s in-depth research into Dickinson’s work as part of her Creative Practice-based PhD Women on the Edge of Landscape. This creative enquiry later became The Knucklebone Floor (Smokestack, 2022), winner of the Laurel Prize, awarded by Simon Armitage for outstanding nature and environmental poetry.
The film reflects on how we remember the forgotten—how we might imagine another’s inner world when so much is lost to time. Dickinson’s watercolours, collected specimens, and the Northumberland landscape serve as a fragile conduit through which Linda explores identity, memory, and the poetics of the overlooked.
🎞️ About the Filmmaker
Alan Fentiman is a documentary filmmaker based in Newcastle upon Tyne. With over 15 years of experience, he specialises in capturing artists, academics, and heritage stories through a lyrical, observational lens. His work blends the poetic with the factual, often collaborating with creatives across the North East of England. Clients include the BBC, Channel 4, The Discovery Channel, and Adobe. His films explore themes of place, memory, and creative process.
Linda France was named Environmental Poet of the Year 2022–23 in the Michael Marks Awards. Her selected pamphlet Letters to Katlia is published by the British Library and Wordsworth Grasmere. Her tenth collection, Startling(Faber & New Writing North, 2022), stems from her three-year Writing the Climate residency with New Writing North and Newcastle University.
🎥 Film by: Alan Fentiman
🖋️ Poem by: Linda France
📍 Commissioned by: The Maltings for the exhibition Margaret Rebecca Dickinson: A Botanical Artist of the Border Counties, The Granary Gallery, Berwick (22 October 2022 – 19 February 2023)