The Magpies

Short Film (Full Length) – 1974

I don’t consider myself a good poet, but I do think writing poetry takes less room on the page than prose. And takes longer to write.
– Denis Glover

Now I’m so sick of it that I’d say it stinks!
– Denis Glover, on how he feels about his classic poem

This is good! Send the man out for another bottle of whiskey!
– Denis Glover, on how the interview is going

[The Magpies] devolves on, compassionately I hope, a whole wide field of the country that I was living in — Canterbury — in depression times. And I obviously wanted to express a generalisation of collective experience.
– Denis Glover

Poems need reading at least twice. Accompanied by a conversation about the poem between each reading. The second reading is different. It becomes a different poem.
– Director Martyn Sanderson on the film, in a 2006 interview with Martin Rumsby, Floating Cinemas website

Alistair Taylor used some of the profits from The Little Red Schoolbook to commission Rupert Glover to interview his father Dennis Glover. Rupert shot the interviews then had a disagreement with Alistair and withdrew from the project. Alistair asked me to complete the films. That is how I came to put together two films of Dennis Glover’s poems.
– Martyn Sanderson on the film's origins, in a 2006 interview with Martin Rumsby, , Floating Cinemas website