I was pleased to discover just now that my linking to Laura Theobold’s blog irreducible: a study on the concept and genre of poetry film has led to a short interview over at Awkword Paper Cut. Here’s a bit of it:

I think the genre as we know and understand it today is really new (which explains, in part, the lack of criticism). In the past it’s been really utilitarian, I think: a way for people to just hear and “see” the poetry they couldn’t in person (think of the million videos of poets simply reading their work aloud in front of a camera), but what it’s becoming is a lot more interesting. It’s becoming a new way for poets to create poetry, really, and to reach new audiences. But for everyone I think the goal is a little different: for some artist/poets it can be sort of like an extension of the selfie, a way to establish their brand; for others, it’s about creating a kind of harmony between word and image; some people just want to make something no one has ever made before—because the technology is there. For everyone who’s into it, I think it’s mostly about making something beautiful.

It’s funny, kind of: this project began with a desire to learn where boundaries lie, like “What IS a poetry film?” but I think during the process of bearing down on these distinctions, I realized that I think the future wants us to shed this kind of desire for delineation. I think a progressive future isn’t about making more categories for things we want to understand better, but about embracing the borderlands and “fuzzy” areas when they are doing something meaningful (and I think this applies in a lot of ways), and just like celebrate the fact that they exist.

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Dave Bonta

Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.

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