~ August 2012 ~

Three poems from Savage Sunsets by Adrian C. Louis

http://vimeo.com/45367747

The poems are “Archeology,” “Wheels,” and “Love the Distant Roar,” expertly knit together by Sky Hopinka into one of the best poetry book trailers I’ve seen. Most unusual for the genre is the choice of a reader (Trevino Brings Plenty) other than the poet, but this really works to put the focus squarely on the poems and — with the addition of two listeners — the communal reality they appear to reflect.

Adrian C. Louis is no stranger to film; his novel Skins was made into a feature-length film starring Graham Greene and directed by Chris Eyre. Savage Sunsets, his tenth book of poems, is forthcoming in September from West End Press. For more, visit his website.

*

Housekeeping note: I’ve just started a Book trailers category here, thinking it might be useful to compare and contrast different approaches to the genre. I’ve retroactively added the few videos that came up when I seached the site for “book trailers,” but I know I’ve missed some. Please let me know if you can think of any more trailers I’ve posted.

Clearance by Tom Schilling

http://vimeo.com/47808467

Directed and produced by Jan Walentek, this was shown at the 2010 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in Berlin. There’s also a version in German:

Bill Murray reads Wallace Stevens: The Planet on the Table and A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

Actor Bill Murray reads two poems by Wallace Stevens at Bubby’s Brooklyn, as part of Poets House’s 17th Annual Poetry Walk Across the Brooklyn Bridge, Monday June 11, 2012

Poets, take note. This is how a proper poetry reading is done.

ctrlC/ctrlV by Katrijn Clemer

Belgian poet Katrijn Clemer reads her poem, which, according to the note at Vimeo,

was constructed out of 100 lines taken from a diary.
Each line deconstructed into separate words, constructed back into 20 new lines.
Deconstructed those 20 again into words and then constructed the poem using the cut/up technique.

Annmarie Sauer translated it into English for the subtitles. Swoon did everything else.

Steak Night by Melissa Broder

A fun animation and text from filmmaker Daniel Lichtenberg and poet Melissa Broder. “Steak Night” appears in her widely reviewed new book, Meat Heart. The soundtrack includes original music by Diana Salier and Rob Justesen, and the poem is read by Edward Carden. Both music and animation were produced at Photon SF.

“Steak Night” originally appeared online at The Awl.

The Conqueror Worm by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe would’ve loved this! It was directed by Aurélie Godefroy with music by the band Les Pleureuses, whose keyboard player and art director, Yannis Lo Pellegrino, is the main actor/reciter here, and shares credit with Godefoy for the making of the film.

Costa Rica by Zachary Schomburg

According to the Vimeo desciption, “Costa Rica” appears in Zachary Schomburg’s latest collection, Fjords (see the review by J.A. Taylor at The Nervous Breakdown). Not sure how I missed this when he uploaded it 8 months ago, but it’s as good as any poem-film he’s ever made, proving once again that Schomburg is not just a inventive poet but one of our most adept video interpreters of his own work.

Without You (Ohne Dich) by Hermann Hesse

http://vimeo.com/47438051

A very minimalist take on the Hesse poem by Philip David Edson. It uses the classic James Wright translation for the titling, with punctuation and capitalization removed.

Martyr by Danielle Nicole Burgess

Model/actress/writer Danielle Nicole Burgess stars in this video adaptation of her poem by Austin, Texas-based filmmaker J.J. Castillo of Jose Jones Films. Castillo writes in a recent update on the Jose Jones Films Facebook page:

Really happy with “Martyr” the short poem film I made with Danielle Nicole Burgess, just need to finalize the music…Now I’m thinking about starting an entire series where filmmakers put imagery to other peoples poems. It would be great exposure for the filmmaker and the poet. More to come…

Wax Ear by Alice Lyons

A short poem by Alice Lyons made into a film by Orla Mc Hardy. As with The Polish Language, this appears to have been a collaboration: Lyons is credited with 2-D animation, and Mc Hardy with photography, compositing, computer animation and sound.

Vancouver’s Visible Verse Festival goes global!

Reposted from the Visible Verse Facebook page

We have lots of exciting changes in store for this year’s Visible Verse Festival! The date has been moved from November to Saturday, October 13, directly following the Vancouver International Film Festival and the program, still in the works, will include entries from 56 international artists and 100 videopoems from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Russia, the U.S. and Canada. And for the first time, we are exchanging videopoems with Argentina’s VideoBardo Festival and featuring a selection from their 2012 program. As well, we are happy to host Alberta artist Phillip Jagger who will perform his poetry and present “Reigning In Chaos: Words Into Video”, a hands-on workshop demonstrating the use of handcrafted video, a Kaos pad, iPod and video jamming software.

With videopoetry and poetry film festivals and sites popping up all over the world, Vancouver and Pacific Cinematheque’s Visible Verse Festival maintains its position as North America’s sustaining venue for artistically significant videopoetry. As founder of the Vancouver Videopoem Festival and Visible Verse, curator and host Heather Haley has provided a venue for the genre since 1999 and vigorously contributed to the theoretical knowledge of the form. Haley is to be honored for her work with a Pandora Literary Award and has been invited to present a keynote address at the 4th VideoBardo Festival/Conference in Buenos Aires in November on the theme of “Videopoetry; New Perspectives on an Interdisciplinary Practice.”

 

Pacific Cinémathèque website

 

Pacific Cinematheque map
view on Google Maps

Kata by Lavinia Greenlaw

Another in the Winning Words series of poetry videos filmed by Andy Hutch. “Here professional parkour athlete Jolade Olusanya reads Lavinia Greenlaw’s ‘Kata’ in Stockwell.” I don’t have a category for parkour, but this seems close enough to some of the poetry dance videos to include in that category.

The text of the poem, which appeared in the 2011 collection The Casual Perfect from Faber & Faber, is here. For more on Greenlaw, see her website.