~ January 2018 ~
Children are the Orgasm of the World by Hera Lindsay Bird
Frances Haszard animates a poem by New Zealand poet Hera Lindsay Bird for The Pantograph Punch:
Back in 2012, we held our first-ever event. It was at St Kevins Arcade, overlooking the city. We sat on worn wooden chairs and talked about why we hadn’t left Auckland. Tiny Ruins sang, and Hera Lindsay Bird read from a crumpled piece of paper.
The poem she read that Friday night was Children are the Orgasm of the World. It was unexpected and electric, with the kind of deliciously awkward humour that moms of the future would surely have. We loved it.
Four years on, Hera’s launching her long-anticipated debut collection of poetry, Hera Lindsay Bird, and we’re excited to be celebrating the ocassion with a video of that first poem we heard (animated by Frances Haszard, who also illustrated our remarkable Mint Chicks oral history vid).
(Hat-tip: David Graham at the V-V Talk group on Facebook.)
Mr. Sky by Lucy English
From dawn to nightfall, the sky reflects a couple’s relationship.
(don’t forget to look for the face in the clouds)
A recent addition to Lucy English‘s Book of Hours project, this time by her collaborator at Liberated Words, Sarah Tremlett, who’s credited as photographer and director, with James Symonds as editor and music by Kevin MacLeod.
Update (30 March 2018)
Sarah sent along these process notes:
Lucy and I had two separate ideas in parallel. In terms of the visuals – I get up early and noticed the dramatic colours playing out in the winter sky. Actually a mystical orange glow appeared through the window one morning! I wanted to capture the sky at brief intervals from dawn to dusk (with a history as a painter always fascinated by changing patterns of light) and spent a day doing so. Lucy then mentioned she had a new poem – Mr Sky – which was one of those wonderful coincidences. I like to work from nature or live footage where possible and you can wait a long time for the right image to turn up, or just be too preoccupied to see it … and then you need just the right poem and soundscape!
Про форму / Concerning Form by Yurii Andrukhovych
This is Love Mykolaiv if you dare (Закохайся в Миколаїв, якщо насмілишся) by Ukrainian director Angie (Anzhela) Bogachenko, featuring actors Zoryana Tarasyuta and Denis Shvetsov and a poem by the prominent Ukrainian writer Yurii Andrukhovych called “Concerning Form”, with Roman Reznik’s English translation in the subtitles. Visit Poetry Film Live for the full text and background on the film (including bios of Bogachenko and Andrukhovych). Here’s the summary:
The film introduces viewers to the architecture and the ‘peculiarities’ of life in Mykolaiv. Angie Bogachenko says: “We love our city, but over the years it loses shape. How can it be corrected? Imagine that you found a magic music box, which is able to change any of the drawbacks.”
The Fauvist In Spring by Daniel Cockrill
https://vimeo.com/40280198
Poetry by the UK performance poet Daniel Cockrill animated by Richard Jackson (Plume Animation) with music by Julian Ward. Jackson does a marvelous job of expanding and extending the images in the texts, connecting what appear to be two separate poems, and concluding with a purely visual epilogue after the credits. Uploaded to Vimeo six years ago, it came to my attention just the other week when it was shared on YouTube by Muddy Feet Poetry.
This is one of at least four animations that Cockrill and Jackson have collaborated on. I see too that both of Cockrill’s books with Burning Eye have been produced collaboratively with visual artists: Sellotaping Rain to My Cheek with the cartoonist Tony Husband, and In The Beginning Was The Word, Then A Drawing, Then More Words, Another Drawing, And So On, And So On with illustrator Damien Weighill. Very cool.
