~ 2018 ~

Threshold by Ocean Vuong

A poem by the justly celebrated young writer Ocean Vuong, translated to film by Michelle Cheripka for the Visible Poetry Project, which released it back on April 23rd. Cheripka is, as they note,

the founder and Executive Producer of Visible Poetry Project. Michelle is currently based in Brooklyn, NY, where she writes screenplays, essays, and poetry. She directs and produces both short and long-form films and web series. She graduated from Columbia University, where she studied English.

“Threshold” is the opening poem in Vuong’s debut collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which has won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, among other honors.

Misery by Sarah Sloat

I’ve been following Sarah J. Sloat’s erasure poetry project using Stephen King’s Misery ever since it began, on a subsequently deleted Tumblr site, as a poem-a-day project in 2016, and thereafter in various online magazines (such as Tupelo Quarterly and Escape Into Life) as Sloat’s erasures have become ever more visually arresting and imaginative. Just last week there was this interview and feature in Neon Pajamas.

So I was delighted to see a video collaboration between Sarah Sloat and Marie Craven, incorporating images from the erasures in a montage of Marie’s own invention. Here’s how Marie describes it in a just-published blog post:

Sarah Sloat creates hand-made visual art pieces that are also poems. She does this by using various techniques to ‘erase’ most of the words from pages of Stephen King’s novel, ‘Misery’. Her ‘erasures’ leave only scattered words around the page, forming small poems. To these, she adds found images, related to the poems in associative ways that might recall surrealism. With Sarah’s permission and ongoing feedback, I have here selected a number of the visual poetry pieces and adapted them. The video of ‘Misery’ attempts to construct a fragmented narrative, or new poem, from the juxtaposition of the selected visual poetry pieces. It focuses strongly on the image components of Sarah’s ‘Misery’ pages and creates a new form in motion with them. Not a strict ‘presentation’ of Sarah’s visual poetry, the video is my response to their inspiration. Music is by Gurdonark, whose Creative Commons music I have been following for about eight years. Other videos I have made from Sarah Sloat’s poetry are Dictionary Illustrations and Nightlight Ghazal.

The Bird by Matt Dennison

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Two interpretations of a Matt Dennison poem by Jutta Pryor, the first incorporating a flute improvisation by Bruno Gussoni. For the text of the poem (voiced by the author in both films), click through to Vimeo.

say your prairies by Martha McCollough

Martha McCollough’s latest videopoem is a bit of a departure from her previous work, reinforcing her reputation as one of the most versatile practitioners of the medium. Whether or not she intended it as a statement on the freshly controversial Laura Ingalls Wilder—the last line would seem to suggest that she did—it’s a great meditation on language and the construction (or destruction) of place.

Happy Independence Day to all my American readers.

An Antelope’s Eyes by Sophia Buchanan Bannister

This complex, multi-faceted videopoem was the April 26 offering from the Visible Poetry Project, and was directed by one of the project’s executive producers, Christina Ellsberg, about whom the website notes:

She graduated from Barnard College in 2016, where she studied medical anthropology and poetry writing. Christina is currently working on an upcoming horror/comedy web series, and will be attending divinity school in the fall.

As for the poet,

Sophia Buchanan Bannister is currently studying English as an undergraduate at Barnard College. In addition to poetry, her interests include baking, comedy, and vintage shoes. She was drawn to the Visible Poetry Project for the opportunity to share a vision, a sentiment, and an urgency across artistic mediums.

Call for work: 2nd Newlyn International Film Festival

Submissions are open for the second annual Newlyn Film Festival, to be held at the southwestern tip of Cornwall in April 2019. Once again, poetry films under six minutes long are solicited, with poetry film scholar-practitioners Lucy English and Sarah Tremlett acting as judges. During the festival, I’m told, they’ll also be giving a talk about the genre. Which is great, because this is one of the few general film festivals to include a poetry film category. We get to break out of the poetry-film ghetto and mingle with other fimmakers! Maybe even make a few converts.

Please visit FilmFreeway for the complete details on how to submit. Note that all films must be in English or have English subtitles; there is a submission fee: £15 or $20; the deadline is January 31; and “Newlyn Film Festival does not require any premiere status, but notes that this may come into consideration during the selection process”. And as a fairly, um, basic filmmaker myself (who—full disclosure—had a poetry film chosen for last year’s screening), this is my favorite bit:

A film’s success is dependent not on its budget or length, but on its core vision and the creativity/efficiency with which it communicates that vision. Programs consist of these diverse visions assembled in an order and rhythm so that even in contrast each is mutually complimentary.

Read the rest.

Dancepoems: a new voice in poetic heteroglossia

The term ‘heteroglossia’ originates in the intertwined roots of the personal and social and captures the dynamic evolution of individual and collective forms of meaning inherent in human experience. ‘Heteroglossia’ was coined by the late Russian philosopher and literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin, who conceptualized it in linguistic terms, as a convergence of multiple dialects and varieties within one language.

Just like all acts of expression, poetry is historically and geographically situated. Exploring poetry through this perspective of multiplicity allows expansion of these boundaries, opening them up to new territories. I have been engaged in what I call heteroglossic poetry for a number of years, with the intention of intertwining various art forms with poetry. Approaching poetry through heteroglossia has infused my practice with freedom and a sense of purpose.

I like to create my own ‘poetic cocktails’, in which I combine my playing of piano or harp with poems written by myself or others. I have also created short films, in which I edited together photographs or film sequences with music and poetic voiceovers. (And I have also experienced heteroglossia on a linguistic level as a poet writing in Slovakian, which is my mother tongue and in English, which is my dominant language).

However, I have felt most satisfied with poetic heteroglossia that blends the ingredients of several artists. In 2015, I held an honorary position as a poet in residence at the Westbury Arts Centre, Buckinghamshire, England. As part of this role I collaborated with many artists represented by the centre: photographers, ceramicists, designers, performers and other creative practitioners. A particularly fruitful collaboration was with a visual artist Kate Wyatt, which resulted in a pamphlet of ekphrastic poems and a joint exhibition at an art gallery in London in 2015.

This experience taught me the importance of placing meaning above any hierarchy of artistic forms. Genuine heteroglossia is not confined by arbitrary boundaries of ephemeral needs or situational priorities. Poetry is placed alongside other art-forms, such as paintings for example, that together constitute one artistic piece. When composing heteroglossically, I felt free to draw upon a vast, shared mosaic that captures the visceral, the complex and the ineffable. Yet, the more my poetic practice had become heteroglossic and artistic collaborations grew, the more I was moving towards a territory of untouchable and transcendent aspects of life. I came to realize that I needed another outlet for my heteroglossic expression: dance.

Dance and poetry often emulate each other. Dance is said to be poetry in motion and poetry the dance of words, so how can their dominant voices be married without conflict? When toying with the multiple voices of dance and poetry, I didn’t want to envelop movement in language. Rather, I aimed to explore how poetry and dance could address the invisible forces within each of us. I wanted to respond to the “visceral ways of connecting to the inner landscape of self and the outer landscape of the natural world” (p.67, Snowber & Bickel, 20151).

I had never danced before but felt that I needed to develop my understanding through experiencing what I was trying to express. Encouraged by Chris Bradley, a dancer, choreographer and teacher living in Milton Keynes, UK, I gained the confidence required to rise to the challenge of composing a ‘dancepoem’. Later, I collaborated with an aerial dancer, Ed Swift, in Manchester and most recently with Dickson Mbi in London. We ‘danced’ poems and ‘wrote’ dance movements – creating ‘dancepoems’.2

Poetry combined with dance has been described as moving poetry or choreopoetry. But if the two originate in unison and yet keep their discrete voices as they progress, then I feel the term ‘dancepoem’ better captures their interconnectivity and shared past. In the concept of ‘dancepoems’, words do not mimic moves and moves do not mirror words. Poetry and dance do not blend; they are in the same rhythm. In this respect, they resemble a musical argument. As Phil Lesh (1982) explained: “A musical argument is not the same as a verbal argument. A verbal argument implies that there’s two sides; a musical argument makes the two sides one thing, like counterpoint”.3 Therefore, when composing ‘dancepoems’, it is important to ensure that both arts play their own ‘instruments’. Poetry and dance should not eclipse each other’s voices, but swell into bigger proportions as one shared voice. In doing so, they enrich individual artistic practices and enable mutual learning and personal growth.

Last year a woman from an unnamed youth organization approached me, with great enthusiasm, about running a workshop for them. I had to turn down her kind offer as I didn’t want to translate this new artistic form into a business opportunity. I didn’t have a recipe that could be followed step by step and developed into a suite of courses. All my ‘dancepoems’ were created organically as a result of gradual and delicate negotiation with the individual dancers. Sometimes a poetic phrase came first, sometimes it was a move. Occasionally there was more dance than poetry, or vice-versa. At times we followed musical phrases and at others, stanzas and poetic rhythm. So far, I have danced with male dancers because it fitted the theme of universal forces that my ‘dancepoems’ responded to, but ‘dancepoems’ can relate to any theme: be it mixed, single, duo or larger dance groups. I told the well-meaning woman that they were free to monetize and popularize the concept in any way that worked for their organization. I felt fixing ‘dancepoems’ to a model would go against the very nature of heteroglossia.

Nevertheless, the more attention my ‘dancepoems’ received, the more I realized that I was producing something new which might be of interest to others. Sadly, as I am not a full-time artist I could not dedicate my time to live performances. I thought of sharing my ‘dancepoems’ online but I was apprehensive of the digital medium and how it would affect poems and dance. I was concerned that the screen might flatten a spatial experience and remove the visceral feeling spectators have when they breathe the same air as the dancers on stage. Moreover, I worried that combining words, dance and music for a small screen might fragment the meaning and overall impression. Taking into account the forces shaping our contemporary lives, including increased digitalization of privacy and communication, I found myself caught between the traditional forms (dance seen live and poetry read on paper) and our modern social media sharing culture.

I returned to Bakhtin for an answer and reread his works. I learnt that denying tension between multiple forms and rich content is at the very heart of heteroglossia. As Benjamin Bailey, University of Massachusetts-Amherst writes, “heteroglossia addresses (a) the simultaneous use of different kinds of forms or signs, and (b) the tensions and conflicts among those signs, based on the sociohistorical associations they carry with them” (Bailey, 2007, p.2574). While diglossia (i.e. the use of two clearly different varieties of language) is about the “development and characteristics of standardization” in language (Ferguson, 1959, p.4295), heteroglossia is about validating and valorizing the tensions among voices.

When I released my first ‘dancepoem’ on YouTube in 2015, it was picked up by several outlets (including Moving Poems and The Woven Tale Press) and resulted in many messages and comments from other artists. I began to realize the power of the collective digital voice and how it can lead to a re-examination of the creative process and its presentation. I came to see how much of contemporary poetry practice depends on the medium (such as so-called Twitter or Instagram poetry) and was encouraged by the prospect of ‘dancepoems’ offering a medium-free art form. I have begun a living book of dancepoems, where I capture my thoughts on producing and consuming dancepoems and where others can add their own works. (Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to join our community.)

To conclude, heteroglossia is an empowering concept that encourages fusion of established canons and innovative forms, and in doing so, is shaping a new landscape for the poetic voice. As our lived realities are becoming increasingly multicultural, multi-platform and multi-vocal, poetic heteroglossia offers a means for realising the polyphonic forces between self and others. For me, ‘dancepoems’ carry the deeper message of heteroglossia, perhaps the most important message of all poetry, which aspires to listen to the world and echo its multiple voices.


1Snowber, C., & Bickel, B. (2015). “Companions with mystery: Art, spirit and the ecstatic.” In Walsh, S., Bickel, B., & Leggo, C. (eds), Arts Based and Contemplative Practices in Research and Pedagogy, New York: Routledge (pp. 67-87).

2https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgHBEuAWdVyVgG4Z7MKxtMfXrXU79R2Nk

3Cited in Gans, David (2002). Conversations With The Dead, Cambridge: Da Capo Press.

4Bailey, B. (2007). Heteroglossia and boundaries. University of Massachusetts – Amherst. From the Selected Works of Benjamin Bailey.

5Ferguson, C. A. (1959). “Diglossia”. Word, 15, 429-439.

Poem in which we hear the word ‘drone’ by Josephine Corcoran

This is the latest in a series of videos by Helen Dewbery and Chaucer Cameron for collections of poetry from Nine Arches Press, which just celebrated its tenth birthday with the publication of the book excerpted here: What Are You After? by Josephine Corcoran. (It’s a lovely collection, incidentally; I just bought a copy and began reading it yesterday. Always good to support a fellow blogger and late bloomer!)

Cities, This City by Joel Oppenheimer

This latest and I think most ambitious of Daniel Cantagallo’s remix-style cinepoems is accompanied by a thoughtful essay on Medium, “Don’t Touch the Poet | Joel Oppenheimer’s New York“. It begins:

Joel Oppenheimer knew cities…actually one in particular…New York City…and to be more specific “New York City below 14th Street”, in that once bohemian enclave of the 60s and 70s where he could do what he did best: be there when it happens and write it down.

Despite his relative obscurity today, Oppenheimer was a legendary figure of the West Village art scene, a Black Mountain College attendee, a regular columnist for the Village Voice, the first director of St. Mark’s Poetry Project on the Lower East Side, and yet still, he never quite received the recognition he felt he deserved in his time, let alone ours.

I came across the off-the-cuff, propulsive energy of Oppenheimer’s “Cities, This City” on UbuWeb from a 1976 reading at St. Mark’s Church. His elegiac affection and tough-talking ambivalence about urban life spoke to my feelings about New York after too many years sprinting a marathon on its hamster wheels with over 8 million other hamsters.

Read the rest.

Solstice Sol Invictus by Lucy English

Hush. Even in the dark days, there is hope.
Think beyond the light failing on this grubby afternoon…

A film by Sarah Tremlett for Lucy English‘s massive, multi-filmmaker collabortive project The Book of Hours.

Every Day by Robin Coste Lewis

The physical and spiritual planes intersect in Ryan Simon‘s meditatively paced adaptation of a poem by Robin Coste Lewis, part of Motionpoems’ Season 8, “Dear Mr. President.”

Dear White America by Danez Smith

This may be a basic video (from the livestream by Katalogon of Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, 2 June 2018), but it is nevertheless essential watching: a master poet at the top of his game calling out the rot at the heart of the American dream. The text is from Danez Smith’s award-winning collection Don’t Call Us Dead and has been reprinted online at Literary Hub.