Purple TV PRESENTS: “Maradona & the Pope,” a visual poem by Miguel Cullen and Ivar Wigan

British-Argentine poet and journalist Miguel Cullen has collaborated with the artist Ivar Wigan on Maradona & the Pope, a two and a half minute clash of visual and verbal poetry which imagines an audience between the iconic footballer and his fellow countryman – the supreme pontiff.

Cullen’s words shimmy through lexicons like lead-footed defenders, while Wigan’s visuals reflect the photographer and filmmaker’s unique and intimate relationships with nightlife culture in night vision. Celebrating Maradona’s catharsis at its heart, the short film winds its way around El Pibe de Oro’s most famed act of black magic – ‘the hand of God’ – as the Pope muses, “Even your feet have soles.”

Malandrino
walking on the points of my boots
saying to the Pope
puoi salvare alcuno guaglio
all I’ve got my carte de crédit villero, a fist;
can you do nothing for a sabandija with his hair combed in garlic?
He asks me to follow
He takes off my football boots and woof!
the ammonia makes his nose tinkle, like onions.
He talks.
Later, we eat carne, with ablutions of Sprite
I take a pitada of his cigarette
the smell of butchers, uncured leather
come from my botines,
“Even your feet have soles”
says the holy father
because I come from shanty towns, villero
and he’s a niño bien.

Poem by Ivar Wigan
Visuals by Miguel Cullen
Foreword by Jethro Turner
Sound design by Daniel W J Mackenzie

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