Bee War is a poetry film by Astra Papachristodoulou. It uses minimalist poetic technique and honey bee imagery to portray the organised chaos and unrest present in our natural world. The film points to a juxtaposition between text and texture, with the poet making a three-dimensional poem made of bio-resin from start to finish. A voiceover of short poems consisted of three-letter words dress the imagery throughout and build a narrative that is not fixed to one particular language as its narrative unfolds out of the global musicality of sounds.
Astra is a PhD student at the University of Surrey with focus in the experimental tradition across poetry, visual art and performance. She is a widely-published author with work featured in UK and international magazines including Ambit, Magma Poetry and Buzdokuz. Astra is the author of several pamphlets including Stargazing (Guillemot Press), and her work has been translated into Russian, Slovenian and Spanish.
Astra currently delivers experimental poetry workshops at the University for the Creative Arts and works at The Poetry Society’s Poetry Review. She is also a founder of Poem Atlas, and has curated several visual poetry exhibitions across the UK. She won the Pebeo Mixed Media Art Prize in 2016, and her visual work has been showcased at contemporary visual exhibitions at the National Poetry Library and the Museum of Futures in London amongst other venues.