~ November 2014 ~
Muscle Memory by Michael Biegner
The last of the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest runner-up poems was written in response to the very same footage by Lori H. Ersolmaz that prompted the winning poem by Amy Miller. This time, the poet is Michael Biegner:
Muscle Memory
This ocean is a gray tidal yank,
That speaks with a blurred accent
of wild greens and blue – the yellow
skin, the sad-eyed light,
these make up the neurons of dark storms.
This frame is a blight of opaque water and dying
movement: go on and be brave.
Sea birds carry word of a drowning in the canals,
To all the lost faces,
To the pink buildings. Helium
lifts the mylar thinking. Salt drops are alive everywhere.
Slog on, unfocused – to the place
where breathing cannot be felt,
where it is not the kind of music we can play by ear.
The resulting film is, I think, quite different from Backward Like a Ghost — which suggests just how central the poem is to our experience of a poetry film. Peter Danbury is the reader.
Biegner described his writing process as follows:
Writing is a generative process for me. I chose Lori’s film because it was rich in composite images. I quickly realized that I could view her work as one views an abstract painting. I found a cozy corner in my favorite coffee shop one afternoon and played the video over and over, each time writing feelings, emotions, suggestive links that came to me as I watched the video and took in the soundtrack. I did not worry about line breaks (I tend to write for voice anyway, so most breaks occur during natural breath points).
After developing the mass of the poem, I began to whittle it away, almost like a sculptor chiseling away flecks of marble. I wanted the end piece to be stark, because the sound track made me feel a barrenness; its repetitiveness paints a great dearth.
The recurring theme of water in Lori’s work also finds its way into this poem. I start with the ocean tugging, suggesting muscle, gravity, a primal force. The drowning is an invented conceit implying the inherent dangers of water. It highlights the struggle of making one’s way (slogging) through primal forces that surround us.
The looseness of the focus of many of the shots connects me to memory: its fragility, its subjectivity. The flashing lightning reminded me of firing neurons of a brain. So when I was done, I had a poem that dealt with these two diametrically opposed aspects of humanity: the physicality of existence, and the realm of memory where we seem to dwell.
Muscle memory, of course, is the way the human body is able to repeat movements with little or no input from the brain. Lori’s video evoked in me the contrast of what we plan versus what we do; what we contemplate in action versus what we allow ourselves to do from some other parts of us.
Lori Ersolmaz has already written at length about the making of her first film from the contest, but had this to add about Muscle Memory:
I am honored to have been able to work with not one, but two wonderful poems from the Poetry Storehouse 2014 Anniversary Contest.
When I received Michael’s poem I re-read it numerous times and felt that it was important to let it breathe. The poem gave me the room to spread it out from beginning to end. I find it incredibly interesting that visuals can help stoke emotions across mediums in subtle, varied, yet common ways—vice versa! Michael’s poem provided a wonderful screenplay that in many ways touched upon my own emotions when I first created the film. For instance, at the beginning, “Yellow skin, sad-eyed light, these make-up the neurons of dark storms…” is a concept about capitalism that I often grapple with and captured my feelings perfectly. I wanted to allow that idea to merge with the imagery from the very beginning and is why there’s such a long break until we hear a voice again. Peter Danbury’s narrative arrived the night before I started editing and his inflection and annunciation of Michael’s poem clicked with me immediately and influenced my use of space within the three-minute film.
I am grateful for everyone who I had the opportunity to collaborate with on the Poetry Storehouse Anniversary Contest, but in hindsight I wish I had more time to actually spend conversing with the poets before I finished the composed pieces. I feel in the future I can gain additional perspective if I connect with them in advance of the final cut. Nonetheless, the process I experienced while working with and viewing all the poems and remixes for the contest will stay with me for some time.
Thanks again to all the poets and filmmakers who took part in this challenging and, I think, ground-breaking contest. We’re all the richer for it.
Resumé by Dorothy Parker
A wonderful little animated poem about suicide. The author’s own recitation is in the soundtrack, along with music by Liam D. Brooks. Tim Bentley is the director and animator. Here’s his description at Vimeo:
Resumé is a dark, macabre little tale about life and the dangers of leaving it too soon. The film is based on the poem ‘Resumé’, written in 1928 by Dorothy Parker, the legendary critic, writer and drinker of 1920s New York.
Without the help of many public domain archives it would never have been completed. Below is a list of all those that helped and to whom I’m very grateful:
Audio recording courtesy of the Dorothy Parker Society:
dorothyparker.com/dpsny.htmarchive.org
publicdomainreview.org
davidrumsey.com
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
wellcomeimages.org
J.P. Sipilä: Ten videopoems I want people to see
Tallinas iela
by Arturs Pünte (2012)
Electrified
by AVaspo/Fresco Pictures (2010)
Open
by Machine Libertine (poetry by Natalia Fedorova) (2014)
Abecedario poético
by Mariano Renterá Garnica (poetry by Raúl Calderon Gordilo) (2011)
The Polish Language
by Alice Lyons and Orla Mc Hardy (2009)
The Clinic
by Kristian Pedersen (poetry by Annelie Axén) (2010)
Sympathies of War: A Postscript
by Tom Konyves (1978)
P-O-E-S-I-A
by Javier Robledo (2007)
Anna Blume
by Vessela Dantcheva (main animator Ebele Okoye; poem by Kurt Schwitters) (2010)
mppt
by Nico Vassilakis (2005)
Libro de huellas (The Book of Traces) by Ángel Guinda
I’m tethering my life
so the storm doesn’t escape me.To think
costs the unthinkable.
A series of gnomic pronouncements, as if in response to an unseen interrogator, accompany shots of the poet’s visible traces: his identity papers, fingerprints, and typewritten words. Ángel Guinda stars in this gem of a book trailer, the work of Charles Olsen, a New Zealander currently residing in Spain, and the production company Antena Blue. (Be sure to click the CC icon on the lower right to read the subtitles—a very good English translation.)
This was one of two Olsen/Antena Blue films selected for screening at ZEBRA this year. Olsen wrote about his experience at ZEBRA for the big idea/te aria nui.
The second film poem, included in the section “Wracking Your Brains” – our preoccupations with the past, doubts and spiritual unrest – was a piece we made for the Spanish poet Ángel Guinda, “Libro de Huellas” (The Book of Traces) where, in a series of striking aphorisms, he reflects on memory, religion, and power.
[…]
I began making film poems using my own poetry and that of my wife, the Colombian writer Lilián Pallares, with whom I direct the production company Antena Blue, “The observed word”. There is a great freedom to explore all the aspects of the image, sound, text, words, narrative, pace, and as a poet-filmmaker it is not necessarily the poem that has to come first. It may be an image or a personal story that lends itself to a poetic treatment later inspiring the text or a filmmaker may piece together fragments of dialogues, sounds and images to create a collage of words and images.
Foretold by Luisa A. Igloria
Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, probably needs no introduction here. Nor was this the first time he’s ever worked with a poem by Luisa A. Igloria, though this may be my favorite of their collaborations to date. And their usual working order was reversed, because Luisa’s poem was written in response to a “first draft” of the video, one of the three prompts in the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. Poetry judge Jessica Piazza selected Luisa’s poem as a runner-up:
Foretold
In that future which pressed
ever closer toward us, time was a roomwhose shape we could no longer determine.
In every city, men stood on platformsgesticulating and making pronouncements.
Armored tanks rolled into the lastencampments, leaving tracks in the river’s
boiled mud. We knew when to flee,what to gather up, what to leave behind.
We walked deeper into blind forests,climbed as high as our feet allowed
up the thinned hair of trees. They let uscocoon there, they let us make hammocks.
At night, we watched as distant flareslimned the unnavigable horizon.
At night, some of us told stories,making shadows with our hands
to mimic the movement of wings.
Marc explained how he put together the video used in the contest:
I had footage of several Psychic TV performances by Allan Chumak. Once, I re-edited a bunch of them for a collab with another poet, but that didn’t happen. The cuts were not wasted and waited on the shelves for another occasion.
I had also footage of an ASMR performance by Epehemeral Rift waiting to be used.
Around the time of the Poetry Storehouse contest proposals, I thought it might be a good idea to put those two pieces of footage together. For the purpose of viewing quality I added an extra layer of light and colour to the Ephemeral Rift recordings. Not really a match, but an interesting pairing.
I created a track and edited the different pieces loosely to the music, hoping it would give some writers an idea.
Luisa told us:
My writing process in response to Marc’s video, which resulted in the poem “Foretold,” was to open two screens on my computer: on the left side, Marc’s video, and on the right, the first page of a new (blank) Word document. I decided that I was going to compose—start immediately to write—as soon as the video started. Almost all of the poem’s lines were generated exactly in this manner, with very slight revisions afterwards (mostly having to do with lineation and spacing, tightening some of my word choices). In Marc’s film, the images—and their strategic juxtaposition—were immediately striking, as was his choice to strip them of sound and instead use music and ambient sound. Though I realized they may not have had anything specifically to do with each other, their pairing in the film’s sequences began to suggest an underlying narrative to me, filled with foreboding and portent. The occurrences of repetition in the film suggested that. The closeups of hands and mouths spoke to me of something both very intimate and very distant, and in some instances those mouths looked as if they could very well be on the verge of varying emotions: rage, for instance; or pleasure, or fear.
Marc added:
Once I got Luisa’s poem, it all came together perfectly. Suddenly these images and their pairing become very political. Nic S. provided a very suitable reading for the track. It all needed a bit of re-editing (in length and pace), but the main visual idea is still the same, but much more powerful because of Luisa’s fantastic poem.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: Mike Galsworthy and Corinne Weidmann
Short collaborations can be either a godsend or a total bust. I myself have teamed up with Nicelle Davis on several projects. It is as if we can read each other’s minds. The best part of it all is that we don’t get in each other’s way. She writes and I illustrate. Being a professional illustrator and dealing with clients can be frustrating and mind-numbing at times. So when a collaboration falls into place, it’s well worth all the crazy clients one has to deal with.
Recently I came across another collaboration, between Mike Galsworthy and Corinne Weidmann. Actually, Mike found me through Vimeo and whatever publicity was going around. I read and viewed On a White Horse and found it intriguing. I asked him who the illustrator was, since the works fit so well together. It would be interesting if they could incorporate actual animation into this particular project. I think it would make a stunning video poem. But let’s face it, as it stands now it’s pretty beautiful. Here is what Mike has to say.
Mike Galsworthy: Inspiration for the poem: I had been reading old English ballads – those centuries-old magical poems that had been passed down as oral traditions with no known authors. I was cooking up one of my own about a rider riding through a dark forest grabbing at leaves when I suddenly thought of this as a metaphor for industry relentlessly destroying the environment and creating an apocalyptic world. The rest wrote itself very quickly. The rhythm mirrors the horse rhythm and the repetition is deliberately modeled on the dark poetry of Poe, whose work I love for its fluid lyricism.
I had always wanted to tackle climate change and environmental destruction, but addressing it directly left me bored and cold. This angle gave me a route to explore the morality and drivers of selfish destructive behaviour and delusions of safety within a different world. A modern caution in an old-world format.
The collaboration: I was contacted out of the blue by a Swiss artist living in Canada (Corinne Weidmann). She said she loved the poem and because it was so vivid in her mind, she’d love to do an illustration of it. I said “yes, of course”, of course! She was actually due to come to London to live, so we met up lots of times to discuss how we both visualised it. The overlap in mental imagery was strong, but we also both had little touches in our minds that came together well (she had the idea of the horse passing people/workers through its system and out its rear end, and the rider in stove-pipe hat and industrial revolution attire; I had the mental image of the “burning famine” people with hollowed-out stomachs with fire in their place, etc). Anyway, I took her ’round some poetry gigs over the months that she was working on it and the piece was developing. It was designed to be one poster based on Swiss folk art style, with the story told in overlapping/interlinked images. I suggested to her that when it was ready, I could turn it into a YouTube video. I thought we could scan it in, then take the story section-by-section as I narrated.
When it was done, that’s exactly what I did. Corinne sent me high-res scans and I just got busy digitally editing with the tools I had… Microsoft Paint and Windows Movie Maker. I had to make some visual edits so that I could get the 16:9 pictures clean (free of overlaps from different parts of the image). And there were also some bits missing for the sake of the narrative (rain, lightning and poisoned rivers running overland) so Corinne did some new, separate pics for those.
With the sound recording, I did it all myself, ripping horse hooves and spooky sounds off YouTube then mixing and looping them to suit.
Corinne Weidmann: The first time I came across Mike Galsworthy’s poem On a White Horse was on YouTube. I was not particularly interested in poetry at that time, but I liked how visual this poem was. Mike raised a topic that was not new, but the way he did it was slightly different to what I’d heard before.
I simply wanted to illustrate it – just for fun. There was no intention of publishing it, nor anything else, but I thought that at least I would let the author know. He liked the idea and a collaboration turned out of it. I guess it also helped that I moved to London from Switzerland at the time.
The majority of my artworks and illustrations are done manually. It is the process of trying new techniques and experiments that I love the most. I count myself very lucky that my clients are usually well up for that.
For On a White Horse I chose to work with scraperboard and a knife.
I wanted it to become an old folk tale, or even a myth. A legend that everyone has at the back of their minds – omnipresent, but only frightening in the dark.
The style is based on traditional Swiss paper cut. Folk art is humble and honest. It tells stories about the daily lives, beliefs and worries of mostly farmers – those whose lives directly depend on nature and who are already affected by the impact of climate change.
The whole artwork is cut into a big piece of black scraperboard. The idea to make a video out of it emerged much later on. I didn’t intend to go into moving poetry, but I have a curious mind and hardly ever say no to a new direction.
My creative universe is called Iuna, named after a black Amazonian bird – Tinta simply means ink. Iuna Tinta is a bridge between illustration and art, with a pinch of typography thrown in.
The work is inspired by ancient mysticism, indigenous art and sinister fairytales. Professionally I often work for board sports companies such as Quiksilver and Roxy Snowboarding. Apart from that I exhibit and indulge in many personal projects. One is collaboration with a group of scientists and artists, based in Brisbane, Australia. Our aim is to convert conservation science messages into art, make them more accessible and to raise awareness concerning this combination.
The goals I have as an illustrator/artist is to continue doing what I am doing right now. To be able to let this visual universe expand naturally and in a way that feels right.
Mike and I were thinking of doing more projects together, but so far these are merely loose ideas. We do have very matching minds, which is rare – but at the same time we also have busy lives.
I Was Grass by Amy Miller
Spanish director Eduardo Yagüe’s film for the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest runner-up poem by Amy Miller. As mentioned in the contest results, poetry judge Jessica Piazza actually selected two of Miller’s poems: one as the first-place winner (see “Backward Like a Ghost“) and the other as one of three runners-up. Here’s that second poem, Miller’s response to Yagüe’s contest footage:
I Was Grass
Under the city, I grew
and sabotaged
the alleys.
What did I have to drink
but cracks of sun
and the sometimes slash
of paint? Or was that
song? I heard it too. Bachata,
an imagined circle step.
You don’t think
grass can dance?
Stop.
The bending
blade and its shadow.
No, watch. Can you see me?
The stem, the glint,
the green.
Yagüe had this to say about the making of the film:
Nic S. suggested I make a video as inspiration for poets writing for The Poetry Storehouse’s first anniversary contest. I am always very honored to collaborate with TPS, so I told Nic that I would be delighted to make the video.
I spent September and October in Stockholm, Sweden. I recorded footage for Marc Neys (Deze zachte witte kamer, poems by Runa Svetlikova). I also directed a videoclip called La viuda, for Spanish singer Pablo Werner, and started several personal projects (such as the Storehouse remix Broken Figure, by Kathleen Kirk). I also took a lot of pictures of the beautiful Swedish capital and its magical light.
Close to Kungsholmen, the district where I live when I go to Stockholm, there is a place that one might find in every big city (it could be New York, Paris or Madrid) and that’s the set I used for the video. A rough stage full of graffiti, concrete and passing trains contrasting with the fragility and tenderness of the great little actress Emma Sjöstrand (10 years old). The general idea was to capture claustrophobic urban images of this place and contrast them with a few shots in a park (Kronobergsparken) with a very different light, air and colors. The only idea I was sure about was the girl snapping her fingers, staring at the camera and disappearing.
I chose for editing some very beautiful music by Kosta T. But my idea was to ask for an original musical score for the final cut from Four Hands Project — the great, imaginative film and TV composers Alberto Ayuso and David Gómez. They composed an exclusive score for what I consider a very special video.
I am quite sure Amy Miller recorded her poem while she was watching the video. When Nic sent me the audio I hardly touched anything, just added a shot or two and revised the rhythm of some images. Amy’s poem was perfect for the images and the music fit incredibly well with both images and words.
I hope you like the final result. I am very happy to have been a collaborator in this amazing project of TPS. Congratulations to Amy Miller and the other winners and participants in this year’s contest, and very special congratulations to Nic S. for her great and generous work of spreading poetry and connecting artists all over the world.
We asked Miller about her writing process. She wrote,
I was moved to write a poem for Eduardo Yagüe’s video—of course—because of that girl. That beautiful, innocent, wily girl. She owns that alley. She is that alley. But she’s something else, too: a spirit of defiance.
The video opens and ends with grass. And I couldn’t help thinking of what that city will look like long after humans are gone, that apocalyptic vision of the vines engulfing the concrete, the wilderness taking over again. And the Carl Sandburg echo is no accident; his grass covered the battlefields, but this girl’s grass uproots the city, grows up—as she does—right through it. She is the blackberry, the kudzu, the bindweed that splits apart the pavement of every civilization and imparts her wildness into it. I think there’s a youthful hope to that, a reminder that every kid has dreams that reach far beyond the walls of where she’s growing up. Every kid is capable of bringing down the old city, of changing the drab old ways—just watch out.
I wanted the girl to ask questions, to get in the reader’s face: “You don’t think grass can dance?” And I wanted her to talk about an actual dance. In the theatre festival where I work, we’re doing a play next year that features Puerto Rican Jíbaro folk music, and it’s been on my mind a lot. I started looking on the internet for a dance that Latina girls in New York might aspire to do, and I found Bachata, which originated in the Dominican Republic. I chose it for the sound of the word and its popularity in clubs. But when I realized I was going to have to record the poem, I had to go back online and listen to recordings of people saying the word because I’d never heard it spoken. (I’m in Southern Oregon; Bachata, along with many other cool things, has not reached us yet.) I had practice the word over and over before recording the poem. Probably still didn’t nail it.
Is Eduardo Yagüe wonderful, or what? Such lyric beauty in this film. What a privilege it was to work with it.
4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival program online
We received the following press release from CYCLOP organizer Polina Horodyska:
21 to 23 November, 2014, in Kyiv the 4th CYCLOP Videopoetry Festival will be held. The program features video-visual poetry related lectures, workshops, round tables, discussions, presentations of international contests and festivals, as well as a demonstration of the best examples of Ukrainian and world poetry films, competitive program, awarding ceremony and other interesting intermediary projects.
This year lectures are devoted to the birth of the concept, experience of poetry film creation, visual component of literary projects, and videopoetry in cinematic discourse. At Saturday’s showing, you can watch the best examples of new Ukrainian videopoetry. On Sunday, we will show the unique festival video of international contests. You will also have an opportunity to watch the 1st ‘Videopoetry Laboratory’ findings and take part in their discussion, and to visit an incredible poetic-musical-visual «rozdilovi» performance prepared for the fest by «ArtPole» creative agency…
The International Poetry Film Festival’s selection will be shown on November 23, Sunday, at 12:00 – 16:30.
The program for the international screening, organized by cooperating film festival, is very international indeed. I was impressed by how many different festivals they’re working with: VideoBardo in Argentina; AVaspo in Vilnius; Liberated Words in Bristol; KHM Cologne & Kunststiftung NRW in Berlin; Rabbit Heart in Worcestor, Massachusetts; Ó Bhéal in Cork; and ZEBRA in Berlin. Click through for the complete list of films and filmmakers.
The making of “Backward Like a Ghost”
When I was asked to participate in the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest my husband and I were going through a difficult business transaction. The three-minute film was in response to my raw emotion at the tension that arises from a corporate culture which, on the one hand, tends to treat people as if they are unimportant throw-away items, and on the other as consumers who they want to woo and understand how to sell more to in the future. The film explores a brief roller-coaster ride, which reflects what I see as the sometimes hollow promises that humanity can make in the name of economics.
From a production standpoint, the clips that I used to compose the piece include some of the earliest moving images I shot, but never knew what to do with. My shooting spans as far back as ten years ago, to a week or so before editing the film.
The haunting water images that seem to appear as a canal were actually shot in Istanbul on a ferry ride. My husband, a Turkish native, introduced me to the ferry on my first visit, and we took it again on numerous subsequent visits. The Bosphorus is a huge, engulfing sea where tankers are as close as your nose, and the only other place I’ve experienced this is sailing in New York harbor. On one of my trips I finally had a camera to capture the birds that follow the ferry back and forth. I was always mesmerized by how close the birds came to the boat, as if they were repeatedly trying to tell the weary travelers something important, yet no one listened. The juxtaposition of the large tankers and the very tiny boat going backwards at the beginning of the film represent my feeling about the David-and-Goliath experience people have with the corporate culture they experience, but try to show a blind eye to until they personally rub up against it, sometimes with devastating effects.
Some of the push-pull tension in the abstract portions of the film and the sound effects provide bridges, that are what I used to transition from my feelings of getting the “run-around.” The balloons, also shot in Istanbul, were used as my celebratory image of finally being over with the ordeal, and the very first and last shots are representative of those firing synapses that we feel when we go shopping, but more often than not prove to be brief, illusory happiness until the next fix.
The people in the piece were shot on 14th Street in Manhattan with a small Flip camera while I was waiting to meet a client for dinner. I was standing against a wall outside Whole Foods, and was amazed that while I was holding up a camera and shooting, people were standing and passing by without even noticing me. I was shooting without interruption for about 10-15 minutes and felt like a fly on the wall. A young guy with his back towards me was less than two foot away, waiting for his girlfriend. A few minutes after they met up, another woman came gliding in between us. I placed her with footage that I shot of a kid’s jungle gym that softens the blow by being “pretty in pink.” I feel these shots eerily represent how we bump up against each other, yet unwittingly don’t realize or care about the damage caused.
It is interesting to find that Amy Miller’s winning poem is not that different from what I was trying to explore myself. Often immigrants come to America, the land of opportunity, for its great economic benefits, yet for some it promises little. Do we live in a world where money is more important than we are? It’s a subject I wrestle with, but have no answers.
Watch the finished film at Moving Poems (and read Amy Miller’s own, fascinating process notes). —Ed.
Swoon: Top Ten Videopoems
Here’s a top 10 showcasing some of the possibilities in videopoetry. Things I like a lot over the last few years…yes there are many more.
Heimweg (poem by Peh)
Film and animation: Franziska Otto (2010)
Racing Time (poem by Chris Woods)
Adele Meyers & Ra Page (2012)
Delikatnie mnie odepchnąłeś całą (poem by Bozena Urszula Malinowska)
Marcin Konrad Malinowski (2012)
https://vimeo.com/35127990
You and Me (“May i feel said he” by e.e. cummings)
Kartsen Krause (2009)
Profile (poem by R.W. Perkins)
R.W. Perkins (2012)
The Forty Elephants (poem by Gérard Rudolf)
Alastair Cook (2011)
Silent Scene (poem by J.P. Sipilä)
J.P. Sipilä (2013)
Our Bodies (A Sinner’s Prayer) (poem by Matt Mullins)
Matt Mullins (2013)
Who’d have thought (poem by Melissa Diem)
Melissa Diem (2013)
What Remains (poem by Gareth Sion Jenkins)
Film by Jason Lam (2010)
Backward Like a Ghost by Amy Miller
This is the film made for the prizewinning poem from the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. Lori H. Ersolmaz is the filmmaker (see the recent Poetry Storehouse interview with her), and as announced on Monday, Amy Miller’s poem was selected by Jessica Piazza along with three runners-up in the Poetry category of the contest. In each case, the poems were written ekphrastically, in response to one of three, brief clips — which can still be viewed in the contest guidelines. Here’s what Miller wrote after watching Ersolmaz’s clip:
Backward Like a Ghost
They came so far to see this.
Then up close, the hollering and arrows,
the flash of something they should know
but can’t quite understand. The lonely
talk of everyone. Together
we make a city, close
and warm but blinding
in its multitudes. Night,
then open glass. Backward
like a ghost, they move against
what comes. If they find
the solace of sunlight
in a shallow field,
we’ll know them
by the dark birds
of their eyes, the home
only they can conjure.
It’s coming,
the clearing and the day.
They’ll step out into our city.
We won’t see them after that,
their parties and rising,
their dust that settles
just like ours.
When Ersolmaz read the poem, she decided to call on not one, but two readers to lend their voices to the soundtrack: Nic S. and Robert Peake. She told us:
Amy’s poem feels embedded with the imagery in an esoteric way. Amazing how she was able to do that. I now completely see the piece the way she’s written the poem. I knew what I wanted to do with your voices and they fit so beautifully together too! I am so pleased you asked me to participate and honored that the winning poem was with my piece.
UPDATE (15 Nov.): Read Ersolmaz’ short essay “The making of ‘Backward Like a Ghost’” at Moving Poems Magazine.
We asked Miller what it was like to write in this way.
It was so much fun to write poems for the videos in the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. I’ve always liked writing ekphrastic poems based on photos, paintings, and musical pieces. But a video is a different animal, with the visual and aural elements already working together to form something more complex than their parts alone. And writing specifically to pair a poem with a video, there’s the added element of time: The video has its own rhythms, and it only goes on for a finite time. Coming up with a poem for that that feels a bit like songwriting—fitting an idea and voice to a structure imposed by something outside of the text.
To start the process, I watched Lori’s video over and over. To me, the predominate images are the arrival by sea at the start (a hint of Liberty Island), the blurred people and cityscapes in the middle (including that backward ghost, reflected in a bus window, maybe?), and that clear shot at the end of the tall buildings on a canal, a place that felt like Amsterdam. All of this, in my mind, added up to a story of immigrants, and specifically, refugees. It’s the “after” image of what happens to refugees after the part of the story that we usually hear—the displacement and the journey—ends. They reach the shores of their new home—and then what? That blurry, confusing middle part of the video is a picture of alienation, of culture shock and skirting the scene without quite being able to understand what it’s about. There’s also a deep, world-ending loneliness in the images of water and sky. And the hazy shots of people speaking—so close, right at hand, yet indistinct—evoke the blurriness and dimming of communication when you know a little of a language and then are bombarded with it full strength, all day.
Originally I wrote the poem in first person plural—“we,” from the viewpoint of the immigrants. But that began to feel too precious and disingenuous, the appropriation of someone else’s story. I have never been an immigrant. But I’ve lived in cities where there are lots of immigrants, and I’ve heard and seen the attendant bigotry all too often. So I chose the POV of a collective “we,” of the city itself, a polyglot community built on the waves of immigrants who came before. I wanted to evoke a collective compassion for the newcomers and the stories and realities they come from.
Congratulations again to Amy, and a huge thanks to her and Lori for this wonderful film. In my opinion, the ekphrastic approach is a great way for writers and filmmakers to collaborate, and I hope these contest results encourage more of it. (We’ll be sharing the other three films from the contest here and on Vimeo in the coming days.)
