~ June 2014 ~
Tu t’es toujours trompé (You’ve always been wrong) by René Daumal
Being aware is not a still state,
it’s an act.
If you think about that
when you’re part of a crowd,
you’ll see yourself surrounded by sleepwalkers.
René Daumal was a “French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet” (Wikipedia), here adapted to video by Katia Viscogliosi and Francis M., A.K.A. Derviches Associés, in a piece that was included in the 6th ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival (October 2012, Berlin) and the “Cinéma fragile” installation at Lyon International Contemporary Art Biennial, Résonance (November 2011).
Strawberry Moon by Erica Goss
My fingers find the grit
of your chin
like the seed-crowded
tips of strawberries
we stole and ate
in darkness…
This is the 6th installment in the 12 Moons videopoetry series presented by Atticus Review each month in 2014, featuring Erica Goss (text), Nic S. (voiceover), Kathy McTavish (music) and Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon (concept, music and direction). Neys shared some process notes on his blog:
A lush short poem that I wanted to give an extra dark layer by adding a bit of ‘danger’.
I went back to the public domain feature Dementia 13 for the footage.
A nightly rendez-vous with a lot of staring between the two characters.
Leaving the story open and full of questions…I started to work with certain parts of that footage.
Once I had a basic montage, I awaited Nic’s reading to work on a soundscape with musical blocks provided by Kathy.
امر گيت / A Song Everlasting by Attiya Dawood
All the flowers in my country have been picked
And gunpowder planted instead.
Fragrance breathes its last
In a torture camp.
The very lane where hand in hand with you
I have danced to the music of peace,
There a death-dealer is spread-eagled.
Ammar Aziz directed this poetry film featuring Pakistani poet, writer, and women’s rights activist Attiya Dawood, accompanied by dancer Suhaee Abro. Be sure to press the icon marked “CC” at the bottom of the video to view subtitles in English, Sindhi or Urdu, or click through to the Umang website to read the text in all three languages.
This World (Ten Świat) by Czeslaw Milosz
A brilliant animated poem from Zbigniew Czapla, a Polish screenwriter, director, animator, painter and graphic artist. It was recently featured on Tin House Reels, accompanied by one of their usual engaging write-ups.
Zbigniew Czapla created this week’s Tin House Reels feature, This World—a short based on the poem of the same title by Czeslaw Milosz—at the invitation of the Fundacja Pogranicze, as part of a multimedia exhibition at the Museum of Czeslaw Milosz in Krasnogruda. Czapla calls his project “a catastrophic vision and poetic perspective on human life as a set of secrets, accidents, and misunderstandings.”
[…]
“Poetry is a difficult subject for animation,” Czapla said. “It should at all costs avoid banality, infantile associations, and overwrought pathos. The text and sound work together around themes, as in jazz improvisation. Topics connect, overlap, and move away from each other in a game of associations.”
“Animated experimental film is a way for me to combine my various fascinations. Painting, music, theater and literature are like pieces of a puzzle, which I try to organize in a new way. If the end result for me is mysterious and unknown, that it is worth doing. The expected effects do not interest me. A lot of the work ends up being unsuccessful, but that always comes with artistic risk.”
White Fur by Mark Wunderlich
Motionpoems‘ latest production was directed by Georgia Tribuiani, an adaptation of a poem by Mark Wunderlich. The Motionpoems website includes bonus materials for the video: interviews with the filmmaker and poet by Jeannie E. Roberts, who writes:
As I watched Georgia Tribuiani’s motionpoem, “White Fur,” I was instantly drawn into her world of light, color, and contrast. Tribuiani sets the scene beautifully and powerfully within Switzer Falls, a wooded area in the San Gabriel Mountains, Los Angeles County. The albino deer, depicted as an African-American albino man, runs barefoot through the woods, where he follows the banks of a stream, eventually stopping to look at his reflection within a pool of water. Tribuiani imagines a story that is, in her own words, suggested: She envisions the albino deer as Narcissus: a young man, mesmerized by his own reflection, who falls in love with it and eventually drowns. Though not necessarily the intent of Mark Wunderlich’s poem, Tribuiani creates a stunning metaphor, a poem within a poem. All great poetry has layers, and this director has found another layer with thought-provoking elegance and creativity.
Mostly about a color by Jenene Ravesloot
This film by Jutta Pryor is especially interesting for what it does with the soundtrack, a psychedelic interweaving of the reading by Nic S. and a track called “The Ritual and the Delusion Part 1,” by the musicians’ collective Masonik. The poem, by Chicago-based poet Jenene Ravesloot and first published in CC&D Magazine, is from the Poetry Storehouse.
Embracing the “fuzzy” areas: an interview with poetry film critic Laura Theobald at Awkword Paper Cut
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.
Swoon on J.P. Sipilä
Marc Neys’ “Swoon’s View” column at Awkword Paper Cut this month offers an appreciation of the Finnish videopoet J.P. Sipilä — in particular, his recently completed “online poem installation,” Sleight of Tree.
Sipilä creates compositions that generate gentle moving images in relation to poetic texts that leave traces and balances on the edge of recognition. He has discovered innovative approaches to putting poetry on screen. This means re-thinking the relationship of image, sound, and text that move in lyrical spaces, creating multiple ways to experience poetry.
If I only had one word to describe this body of work it would be grace. I don’t do the whole experience justice by separating these two videos from the rest. They do, however, give you a taste.
The separate lives of poems: an interview with Sherry O’Keefe
This is the 15th 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 Sherry O’Keefe.
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.
SO: If a poem is a rock, and if that rock is in my hand, I look for its entry point. Rocks can be cracked open to reveal a network of both the beauty and the ugly inside, but where exactly is the best entry point? And how and when? Submitting to The Poetry Storehouse is submitting to the experience of watching another hand with that rock, turning it over and over, searching for an entry point. So many possibilities, it’s liberating to witness. There’s more than one way to gain entry, to crack that rock cleanly.
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.
SO: I tend to write from a state of confusion, seeking clarity. But if I focus too much on clarity what I write becomes a narrow experience. I like most when the seemingly disconnected connect with points coming from a wider field. Finding the balance between holding on and letting go has become easier because the remixes present views from that wider field.
Through The Poetry Storehouse, my poem about a pilot building the N a universe using the table setting at a café became a film featuring a wolf in the wilderness. The poem was a result of a dinner conversation; the remix expanded it, offering a new vista point from which one could experience wider implications of a universal law.
A second poem featuring a setting of an afternoon spent at a remote ranch became a film based on vintage news reels of beavers and men moving houses, a young girl watching from the window. On the surface my poem presented honey and bees, bells and dying goats, but beneath the surface was a respite from the solitary path we each face, this respite appearing in the random, circular ways we connect to one another.
Both remixes kept from bopping the poems on the nose and instead expanded into a wider view, allowing for so many more entry points.
3. Would you do this again? What is your advice to other poets who might be considering submitting to The Poetry Storehouse?
SO: I would love to do this again. It’s too easy to hold tight to what we intend the poem to be, but every time the poem is read by someone else, it takes on a life separate from its creator. I have learned something new each time my poetry has been featured in a remix. The experience of letting go is liberating.
4. Is there anything about the Storehouse process or approach that you feel might with benefit be done differently?
SO: I like the relaxed atmosphere at the Storehouse. It allows for organic response from the film makers. Each poem takes on new life when we hear someone else read it, or watch another’s video of the poem.
5. Is there anything else you would like to say about your Poetry Storehouse experience?
SO: My first experience with video poetry was when Marc Neys approached me a few years ago seeking permission to turn my poem, “This Was Supposed to Be About Karl…” into a moving poem. I had no idea what he felt about the poem and was curious to see what he would do. It was a great experience. The poem had specific meaning to me, but through his film the poem allowed for many layers to be explored and experienced.
Film production is labor intensive and yet I hope more and more of us find the time to explore a poem through musical and visual portraits. If 12 videos were produced for one poem, we’d have 12 different experiences and this is what interests me. So: many thanks to the crew at TPS for making this possible. I appreciate what you are doing.
