Concerning Melchior (a chain of things that make me warm) by Hilde Susan Jægtnes
A Poetry Storehouse poem by Norwegian poet Hilde Susan Jægtnes gets the Swoon treatment.
I used her reading to create this soundtrack [SoundCloud link]. For the visual part of the video I wanted a strong contrast between blurry images of light (filmed at an exhibition on the history of light design) and extreme close ups of human skin and hair. Trying to create a mix of sensuality and a weird sensation of fright. Alienated.
Nic S. has also made a video with this text, using her own voice in the soundtrack, but I can see why Swoon chose Jægtnes’ reading: she’s the rare example of a poet who’s also an excellent interpreter of her own work—which is especially impressive considering that English is, I assume, not her first language. She is the translator too, I think: the Poetry Storehouse bio indicates that she’s published a collection of English translations of prose poems drawn from her first two Norwegian collections.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.