~ May 2014 ~

Metanoia Lost by Risa Denenberg

On 21 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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https://vimeo.com/92423501

This video remix by Nic S. of a poem by Risa Denenberg layers in footage of one of those natural sights that moves us at a very primal level, I think — rain falling into water — to very good effect. In some process notes on her blog, Nic writes:

Poems on big metaphysical themes are some of the most rewarding to work as video remixes, because they leave the visual field wide open and give the remixer real opportunities to insert him or herself into a poem’s narrative and move it forward in complementary but different ways. This lovely poem by Risa Denenberg at The Poetry Storehouse was a case in point. I read it as beautifully capturing one of those devastating moments of big doubt we sometimes encounter.

Which is where it got personal. The belief I try to live by is that we are lying fallow during such bleak periods, and that, their awfulness notwithstanding, they are at the same time periods of underground preparation, restoration and growth. So I went with that approach. I thought rain, with its double connotation of weeping/mourning and of life-inspiring nature, was the perfect backdrop metaphor. […]

For the cross-fades, I chose images with very personal connotations for me, but which I thought added the right ‘universal’ overtones of the twin companions, loss and hope. All of them jumped out at me as being ‘right’ as I flipped through my clips library. Ending with the bear family at the end might perhaps be a more upbeat conclusion than originally intended in the piece, but the image was insistent, so I went with it. The soundtrack with its lonely piano and melancholy motif and underlying energy was by Mustafank and really felt like rain to me.

There’s a bit more if you click through. I must say I’m grateful to Nic for blogging about her techniques and thought-process in such detail with almost every videopoem she makes.

Office Building at Night by Tim Cumming

On 20 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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An author-made filmpoem by British poet Tim Cumming, who notes at Vimeo that

A line from one of Raymond Chandler’s thrillers inspired the start of this poem, Shelley’s Ozymandias inspired the end, and time gave me the middle, worked on through the winter and spring of 2014, taking for its model Richard Seifert’s 1972 Brutalist Kings Reach Tower by Blackfriars Bridge, where I worked for a number of years at a west-facing window on the ninth floor in the Programmes Department. The soundtrack includes field recordings from Novi Sad, Posnan, Rue Git de Coeur in Paris, and Soho, and the fire was lit in a pot belly stove sometime in 2007.

Mine by Vanessa Agovida and Sarah Davis

On 19 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry, Videopoems
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Vanessa Agovida and Sarah Davis both appear in this dramatized version of spoken-word poem they wrote concerned with domestic abuse, “created by Shannon Morrall’s Crew at Fordham University in 2014 as part of Campus MovieFest, the world’s largest student film festival.” It was nominated for Best Drama and won Best Actress from the 100 entries to the festival. Here’s the full credit list from YouTube:

Vanessa Agovida – Actress/Writer
Joe Gallagher – Actor
Fenizia Maffucci – Cinematographer
Sarah Davis – Actress/Writer
Amanda Pell – Composer
Carolyn Chadwick – Actress
Shannon Morrall – Director

Congratulations to these immensely talented students for a well-made, gripping film about a topic for which we all too often employ the wrong words and metaphors (or none at all).

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Escaping the writer’s closed loop: an interview with Rose Hunter

On 16 May, 2014 by Nic S. with 2 Comments - interviews, literary magazines and websites, theory

This is the 13th in a series of interviews with poets and remixers who have provided or worked with material from The Poetry Storehouse — a website which collects “great contemporary poems for creative remix.” Anyone who submits to the Storehouse has to think through the question of creative control — how important is it to you, what do you gain or lose by holding on to or releasing control? This time we talk with Rose Hunter.


1. Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse means taking a step back from a focus on oneself as individual creator and opening up one’s work to a new set of creative possibilities. Talk about your relationship to your work and how you view this sort of control relinquishment.


RH: I love it any time someone interprets my writing. I’m interested in what they see, especially if it’s something I haven’t seen, or if I disagree with their ideas. And there is something extra going on when work gets interpreted in a different form I think. For example I’ve been really impressed with what people have come up with as covers for my books, and how different they are to what I would have thought of. As writers we are in that closed loop in a sense, creating in the same medium more or less, as we are criticizing in. (Not that criticism isn’t also a creation of course.) But there isn’t that marked transfer, for example, that there is in writing about visual art or music, say. So I think it’s really interesting to look at these videos as (also) a form of engaged criticism in the sense of being an interpretation that shines a light on the work, in a different form. They’re also kind of translations, of course.


2. There is never any telling whether one will love or hate the remixes that result when a poet permits remixing of his or her work by others. Please describe the remixes that have resulted for your work at The Storehouse and your own reactions to them.


RH: Just the one so far, which you did, Nic! I love it, and I love how different it is to what I had imagined. Having not considered the scene (in “You As Tunnel”) beyond what I saw in my head while writing it, I thought automatically of grainy images, maybe black and white or desaturated, flickering perhaps, a gritty realism. Which is not very original (for this poem). I loved your fresh, non-literal take, and the visual symbols you created with the planets and the headphoned and sunglassed woman. You got to a really emotionally true part of that experience. Of my experience. So that is just so interesting to me.


3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?


RH: Yes, for sure I would do it again! Well, re advice I’m not sure, so I’ll just share my experience of submitting. When I was getting together the poems to send, I thought well first of all your guidelines say short, so that ruled out a lot of my current stuff in particular. Then I thought I would take them all out of my You As Poetry book in case that serial idea is interesting to anyone. So I got together five short ones from that book. It’s strange, I had a feeling that the one that you made a video out of might be the one most suitable actually. I don’t know why exactly, but I remember it passing through my mind, that probably someone will make that one. Maybe because it has a clearer narrative than the others and is more serious. And/or because it is very scene specific, and therefore provides more of a jumping-off point for someone else, whereas some of the others I sent are already “jumped-off” so to speak. If that makes sense. Anyway, not advice per se, just something I thought of.


4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?


RH: No, not offhand. I love what you’re doing.


5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?


RH: Well, I blogged about some of my experiences (specifically the issue of reading my work out loud, and my insecurity/phobia). That’s here, and also you reblogged it at Voice Alpha. Thanks for the experience and the questions, and I look forward to keeping in touch and seeing what you do next!

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You as tunnel by Rose Hunter

On 16 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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https://vimeo.com/92389734

Another stunning Poetry Storehouse remix by Nic S., this time using a text by Rose Hunter. Nic posted some process notes to her blog:

‘You as tunnel’ a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Rose Hunter, turned out to be the third remix of an accidental triptych I completed on abusive situations (the first was brother carried the poppies by Theresa Senato Edwards, and the second, Secrets by Ruth Foley.)

It took me more than one reading for this poem too to get at the narrative. After a poem on sexual abuse and one that referenced emotional abuse, I read this one as dealing with domestic violence. The language approach is clipped, condensed and stream-of-consciousness, but the overall impact for me was just as disturbing as the two previous ones.

For the remix, I returned to one of my favorite kinds of imagery – space imagery. I found a series of lovely clips of Jupiter and its moons at Video Blocks, and it didn’t take me long to put my own spin on the story. I re-imagined Jupiter as the brutish abuser around which all pivots, the victim as one of its moons caught in helpless orbit, and the second moon as their dark mutual secret, orbiting with them in silent complicity. With that as the ‘meta’ context, the mannequin clip represented the victim of violence at ground level for me – I saw the mannequin itself as representative of deadening of feeling needed for survival, the sunglasses as having connotations of hiding bruising and of obscuring vision, the headphones as attempt to escape into a different (aural) reality, and the broader head-shaking trajectory of the clip reflecting denial.

The soundtrack was easily picked here – something big and space-y yet with some sense of emotional alarm and general tension, which I found via Eric Hopton at Freesound.

Do read the rest. And if you’re a filmmaker or video remixer, don’t forget to visit The Poetry Storehouse whenever you’re looking for ideas for new projects. There are still many terrific poems there without video accompaniment, most with an audio version (sometimes two audio versions).

Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man by Raymond Luczak

On 15 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems, Performance Poetry
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A fascinating visual conversation between two videos. I always enjoy Raymond Luczak’s American Sign Language performance videos, but the call-and-response here was an extra treat. In the first video, “Luczak performs one of the more famous poems from his book MUTE. This clip was the basis for Brooke Griffin’s animated short film INSTRUCTIONS TO HEARING PERSONS”:

(Also available on Vimeo)

When Brooke Griffin, an animator, asked to adapt my poem […] into a short film, I was surprised and flattered but consented. I performed the poem in ASL and gave her the original footage. I had no idea what she’d do with it, but eight months later, here it is! […]

To learn more about Brooke Griffin’s work, please check out her web site: http://www.brooke.io/

And check out Luczak’s website as well. Mute was published by A Midsummer Night’s Press.

Flower Moon by Erica Goss

On 14 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Part 5 in the 12 Moons videopoem series from Atticus Review, and the first I think I’ve managed to post on the full moon. Credits are as usual: text by Erica Goss, recitation by Nic S., music by Kathy McTavish, and concept, music and direction by Marc Neys (Swoon). I thought I recognized some of the footage in this one, and a visit to Marc’s blog confirms it: I was present when he did the filming last August, during the first Filmpoem Festival in Dunbar, Scotland. Here’s what he says:

“Flower Moon,” where Erica Goss explores the privilege and burden of her name and all of its meanings.
A name afraid of loss.
A name the color of soil.
A name that sounds like
three small cars colliding.
These lines steered me in the direction of the footage used in this video.

I started to work with certain parts of that footage (shot last summer in Dunbar).
Once I had a basic montage, I awaited Nic’s reading to work on a soundscape with musical blocks provided by Kathy.

I said it before and I will say it again. Cooking’s fun and easy when you have great ingredients.

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First Draft by Amy Wang

On 13 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Performance Poetry, Videopoems
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An imaginative blend of graffiti-painting and performance poetry by Duke University student Chrislyn Choo, whose description at Vimeo reads:

Spoken word poem penned and performed by Amy Wang. Thank you for partnering with me to produce this final project for my film class, Amy!

Spell Against Impermanence by Kim Addonizio

On 12 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Animation
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Cheryl Gross’ inimitable animations accompany Kim Addonizio’s reading.

Blackbird magazine feature on 1921 poetry film Manhatta

On 11 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - literary magazines and websites

I’ve been known to refer to the avant-garde film Manhatta by Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand, which includes lines from Walt Whitman, as the first true film poem, but that might not be entirely accurate, according to a feature on the film in the Spring 2014 issue of Blackbird.

Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler filmed Manhatta throughout 1920, after Sheeler approached Strand. The film consists of sixty-four shots, mainly of lower Manhattan, with intertitles consisting of lines (sometimes partial or revised) from the Whitman poems “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (1856) and “Sparkles from the Wheel” (1871). It is unclear if the intertitles were integral to the filmmakers’ vision or if the Rialto imposed them.

That Strand and Sheeler hoped to explore the relationship (and the threshold) between photography and film, however, is clear. Manhatta’s shots involve a still camera focused on compositions of city architecture. While the larger elements are static, movement occurs in each shot, often from steam or people miniaturized by the cityscape.

Whether or not the intertitles were part of the original conceit, Manhatta, as it has come to us, presents tensions between text and image, as well as between movement and stillness in film, and between a city’s architecture and its inhabitants.

(Emphasis added.) Another fascinating detail of the original, 1921 screening: this silent film would not have gone unaccompanied, as a contemporary newspaper account makes clear:

Hugo Riesenfeld had the orchestra play all the old favorites like “Annie Rooney,” “Sidewalks of New York,” “She May Have Seen Better Days,” “My Mother Was a Lady,” etc. Two minutes more of it and there would have been community singing—a few intrepid souls were tuning up, as it was.

The feature includes a review from 1921 by Robert Allerton Parker, as well as an embed of the film itself.

被移動的嗎？/ Was Being Moved? by Ye Mimi

On 9 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This author-made videopoem by the Taiwanese poet and filmmaker Ye Mimi was recently featured at Cordite. Her comments there about her creative process are especially interesting:

I was first introduced to the term ‘poetry film’ at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival in Taipei. As a poet, I knew right away that was the kind of video work I would like to do. In 2007, I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to study filmmaking and to continue experimenting with the relationship between poetry and film. To me, making a poetry film is like weaving. It doesn’t prevent me from being a poet. Instead, my poems grow with my films simultaneously. I always write something first before I go out to collect images, but everything is still unclear and improvised when I am shooting. During the editing stage, I like to collage the images. Afterwards, I always write something based on the images and then collage the images more. In other words, my images and text feed each other rather than feed on each other.

She goes on to talk about the specific ways this process played out here, and about the Taiwanese Daoist pilgrimage shownd in the film — do go read it. She concludes:

If someone asks me what my creative process looks like, I would say, ‘It’s like directing a group of electric jellyfish sneaking into a tilt tower to rub together. They could become a sunny day, a fever, a humming song, or a glass of Bloody Mary, which … I never know.’

At Ruby’s diner by Sherry O’Keefe

On 8 May, 2014 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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https://vimeo.com/92974203

Montana-based poet Sherry O’Keefe has long been one of my favorite bloggers, so I was chuffed to see this video adaptation by Nic S. of one of O’Keefe’s poems in The Poetry Storehouse. She used landscape imagery and a soundtrack from a freesound.org user (Eric Hopton) to very good effect, I thought.