John Ormond's Organic Mosaic

This book is an examination of the work of John Ormond, a Welsh poet and pioneering BBC documentary filmmaker.

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John Ormond was a poet and documentary filmmaker from Swansea, south Wales. His early poetry was published while he was a student in the 1940s and, upon graduation, Ormond moved to work as a journalist in London where he soon secured a job at the celebrated photojournalist magazine Picture Post. Having learned there to `think like a camera', he was employed by the BBC in Cardiff during the early days of television, and went on to become a pioneer of the documentary film form. In a uniquely dualistic creative career spanning five decades, Ormond made major contributions both to English-language poetry and documentary filmmaking. This book is the first in-depth examination of the fascinating correspondences between Ormond's twin creative channels: viewing his work against the backdrop of a changing Wales, it constitutes an important case study in the history of documentary filmmaking, in the history of British television, in inter-artistic creativity, and in the cultural history of Wales.