~ 2019 ~
American Arithmetic by Natalie Diaz
At the National Museum of the American Indian,
68 percent of the collection is from the U.S.
I am doing my best to not become a museum
of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out.
I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.
Mohammed Hammad‘s polyvocalic film of a poem by Natalie Diaz — the first of two of her poems included in Motionpoems‘ Season 8, “Dear Mr. President” — is everything a socially engaged poetry film should be, giving the viewer a powerful sense of the political and cultural contexts from which the poem emerged. There’s a very good interview with Hammad in Director’s Notes; here’s a snippet:
How did your conceptualization of Natalie Diaz’s poem evolve from an initially abstract narrative to its current form and how do you feel the use of portraiture and mixed format cinematography strengthened your interpretation of the poem?
I initially had a visual treatment that was more abstract and super ambitious production-wise relative to the budget we were working with. Part of the initial concept was to film portraits of residents of the reservations. After much consideration and a push from my producers, we decided it would be best to have the film feature portraits of indigenous people living in a city to better relate to Natalie Diaz’s depiction. We felt it would create moments of intimacy that would contextualize the statistics mentioned in the poem.
I felt that the camcorder footage would add that extra layer of intimacy between the film and the viewer, to show a more intimate perspective of the illuminating conversations happening behind the scenes.
From its opening moments, American Arithmetic’s soundtrack is peppered with a multitude of vocal fragments discussing the hostile environment encountered by the Native American community. Could you tell us more about the process of building the film’s soundtrack?
The more I embraced the portraiture treatment of the film, the more the pieces of the puzzle came together more, especially with regards to the audio part of the film. It just made sense to add snippets of our subjects’ interviews and to weave together a collection of reflections, each contributing to the conversation on what it’s like to be a Native person in America today.
Read the rest. And do read Diaz’s poem in its original form on the Motionpoems page.
The Smell of Mist by Lucy English
A wonderfully multilayered poetry film by Stevie Ronnie for Lucy English‘s Book of Hours. His process notes on Vimeo are worth quoting in full:
This is the second of two films that I have made in collaboration with the poet Lucy English as part of her Book of Hours poetry film project (thebookofhours.org). As in our first collaboration, this poetry film began as a colour palette that I generated and sent to Lucy. Lucy wrote in response to the palette and sent me back the text and a voice recording of the poem.
I had some footage sitting waiting, so I got to work straight away. I wasn’t happy with the way the words and the film were rubbing against each other so I cleared the decks and went back to the poem. I listened to the recording over several months, trying to slip under the surface of the words. The poem began to play over and over in my head.
One morning over the summer I lay in bed listening to Odette, my eldest daughter, practicing the piano. As she played, the poem was also playing in my head and I was taken by how the two seemed to fit together. I recorded Odette and combined that recording with Lucy’s voice. This audio track then provided the spark of an idea, which in turn led to new raw footage. By the time I sat down to draw the images and the audio track together it felt as if I knew exactly what I had to do.
The most fruitful collaborations always seem to involve an element of serendipity, don’t they?
Ten Invitations to the Poetry Film Genre
I am often caught between Kant and Hegel: Am I more interested in the free play of the faculties of imagination and knowledge and the incomprehensible “aesthetic idea” of a work of art, which always gives more to think than can be understood, or is the conceptual content more important for making a work valuable than its form? In this debate I never wanted to bend in one direction. Apparently my favorite poetry films have both: they create a unique mood associated with questions that are relevant and thought-provoking, but at the same time, they also create pleasure in listening and watching, a revelry in visual stimuli, textures, surprises. The following films are not a top ten list in the sense of a canon. There are just 10 examples I would like to collect here to fill in the format. Or let’s say: they are ten invitations to watch poetry films. Please enjoy them!
Arte Poetica
Director: Neels Castillon
Text: Jorge Luis Borges
The Polish Language
Director: Alice Lyons with Orla Mc Hardy
Text: Alice Lyons
A Petty Morning Crime
Animation: Asparuh Petrov
Text: Georgi Gospodinov
Pipene / The Pipes
Director: Kristian Pedersen
Text and voiceover: Øyvind Rimbereid
What abou’ de Lô / What about the law
Director: Charles Badenhorst
Text and voiceover: Adam Small
The Desktop Metaphor
Director: Helmie Stil
Text: Caleb Parkin
Chamada Geral / Calling All
Director: Manuel Vilarinho
Text: Mário-Henrique Leiria
Hail the Bodhisattva of Collected Junk
Director: Ye Mimi
Text: Yin Ni
Spree
Director: Martin Kelly with Ian McBryde
Text: Ian McBryde
Steel and Air
Directors: Chris and Nick Libbey
Text: John Ashbery.
I Long to Hold the Poetry Editor’s Penis in My Hand by Francesca Bell
Rattle is one of the most widely circulated print literary journals in the U.S., and I’ve always admired its website as well. So I was very interested to see it venture into poetry film production last month, partnering with Mike Gioia and Blank Verse Films to make a film out of Francesca Bell‘s popular, sardonic poem from Rattle‘s Summer 2013 issue. Featuring the poet as an actor seems like a nearly inevitable choice for this poem, but it really works well.
The YouTube description suggests that this will be a monthly thing: “Rattle magazine presents episode one of their new video series ‘A Poet’s Space’. This month…” So that’s really good news.
Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars) by Muriel Rukeyser
Julia VanArsdale Miller of Manual Cinema directed this affecting film, which includes shadow puppets, live actors, and animation by Lizi Breit. Here are the full credits.
In this startling animation of Muriel Rukeyser’s “Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars),” two lives unfold in split screen, one during the tumultuous world events of 1968, the other 50 years later against a new landscape of uncertainty and ever-present digital technology.
The film was produced by the Poetry Foundation just last year, part of a new focus on poetry videos on their website, which I was excited to discover recently. When I started this website ten years ago, the Poetry Everywhere series of animations produced by the Poetry Foundation (in association with docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) was one of the major caches of poetry animations on YouTube, and though they were made by university students and therefore not as sophisticated as the series of Billy Collins animations that had been produced by JWTNY a few years earlier, they were plentiful and my standards were low, so they had a lot to do with turning Moving Poems from a short-term gallery into a long-term blog. I’d always hoped that the Poetry Foundation would devote more of its considerable endowment to producing poetry films some day. It looks as if that day might finally be here.
Judging the first Atticus Videopoetry Contest
Atticus Review is one of a small number of poetry journals worldwide that regularly features videopoetry as part of its online presence. Edited by David Olimpio, it has been published from the USA since 2010, gathering a large readership. Videos are featured in the ‘mixed media‘ section, edited by Matt Mullins, a maker of outstanding videopoems himself. Many interesting hybrids of poetry and video have appeared there since this kind of work became part of Atticus in 2011. Towards the end of 2018, the announcement was made that the journal would for the first time stage a videopoetry contest, and calls for entries went out internationally. I was honoured to be invited to judge via the internet, from where I live in Queensland, Australia.
By the submissions deadline in early December, 115 poetry videos from different parts of the world had been sent to us. It was a pleasure to view all the work. I found quality in most of it. In fact, as a film-maker myself, the rich creativity of my peers was generally humbling (in a good way). The diversity and innovation of subjects and approaches inspired me. So it was a challenge to select only four awarded videos. These were published in Atticus Review on 11 January, along with some commentary on each of them from me, and further information about the film-makers and poets involved. They are best viewed on their respective pages on the Atticus site. Follow the links below to watch and learn more.
Things I Found in the Hedge (first prize)
Kathryn L. Darnell (director, animation)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
Qué Es El Amor (What Is Love) (second prize)
Eduardo Yagüe (director)
Lucy English (writer)
Spain / UK
The Whole Speaks (third prize)
Caroline Rumley (director)
Nelms Creekmur (writer, voice)
USA
The Cleanest Hands (honourable mention)
Amy Bailey (director, writer, voice)
USA
The Atticus contest will continue to happen yearly, a welcome addition to the international calendar of events surrounding videopoetry. To be among the first to find out when the next call for submissions goes out, and to receive regular news of ongoing publications in the journal, subscribe to email notifications.
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I’m taking the opportunity now to share some more of the videos sent in to us. While they were not awarded in the contest, I find each of them uniquely inspired. They are presented here in the sequence I think is most conducive to viewing and appreciating each of them.
Things About Myself and the World That I Will and Won’t Explain to My Year-Old Daughter When She’s Older
https://youtu.be/KL4hh3_FQ1Y
Victor A. Guzman (director)
Rich Ferguson (writer, performer)
USA
Plasticnic
https://vimeo.com/267531514
Tisha Deb Pillai (animator)
Fiona Tinwei Lam (writer)
Canada
Glitter
https://vimeo.com/290947393
Jane Glennie (director, voice)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
UK
Sea Inside Me
https://youtu.be/bOzf7SQXqMM
Brendan Bonsack (director)
Amy Bodossian (writer, performer)
Australia
Dog Daze
https://vimeo.com/238368813
Ian Gibbins (writer, director, voice, music)
Australia
Song for Hellos and Goodbyes
https://vimeo.com/312567950
Tommy Becker (writer, director, music, performer)
USA
Shiver
https://youtu.be/lN0B2SEMTng
Mark Niehus (writer, director, music)
Australia
The Names of Trees
https://vimeo.com/306908806
Pam Falkenberg & Jack Cochran (directors)
Lucy English (writer, voice)
USA / UK
small lines on the great earth
https://youtu.be/kTwRJ8kTUlk
Edward O’Donnelly (director)
Malcolm Ritchie (writer, performer)
Scotland
My Trauma
(turn on ‘closed captions’ for subtitles)
https://youtu.be/7i8A-uUV8rA
Yves Bommenel (writer, director, performer)
France
There are yet more videos I would happily share from the contest submissions, by artists whose work I admire. Alas, too many for one article.
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I’ve now related my enthusiasm for the journal, the contest, the work received, the process of viewing and the honour of judging. So it may seem strange when I say that, in general, I’m not the biggest fan of competitions in the arts.
The arts can never be judged in a truly objective way, in the manner of sporting achievements, for example, that can be decided on measurable microseconds in a race. As I see it, the best we can do when adjudicating the arts is to be as impartial as possible in applying our personal preferences. Our individual sensibilities will have been formed from a combination of direct experiences in life, what we have learned in formal and informal cultural and educational settings, our raw responses to other work as audience members over time, and possibly our experience of participating in the creation process itself, including philosophies and methods we have developed. We will likely be affected by how these influences come together at the particular time when we are making our decisions, which might be different in another month, year or decade. Other factors might feed into this process, whether we are judges in a competition, or simply making personal choices about what to watch and recommend as the ‘best’. There’s nothing absolute in the arts. In short, as I see it, the reception of work in this arena is essentially subjective.
As an artist, and as someone who has been a teacher, I am concerned with the psychological, emotional, and ego ramifications of ‘winning’ or ‘losing’ in relation to creativity (when I say ‘artist’ in this context, I mean film-maker and/or poet). Competitions by their nature focus most attention and reward on the winners. Although we might not want to admit it, the much greater number of participating artists can be left feeling disappointed and lacking to varying degrees. Depending on stage of experience as artists, along with levels of personal and creative development, this may have an impact on ability to function in our work. In some cases, it can lead to artistic growth and more satisfying outcomes. In others, it is simply discouraging of an artist’s practice. Perhaps my attitude is overly maternal in relation to adult people responsible for their own response to challenges. On the other hand, the arts are an area where personal vulnerabilities are often put on the line in a rather naked way, and so the person behind the work may well be more vulnerable in ability to process a perceived ‘failure’. In an era when mental illness has risen to epidemic proportions, coupled with higher rates of this long known to exist in the arts, I think giving some consideration to these issues is warranted.
Competitions in the arts might also be seen in some ways as another expression of competition in capitalism. This makes me wonder: do we really want to approach the arts as survival of the fittest, or else as a kind of lottery? If we are idealistic, there might be some discomfort in approaching the arts in this manner, especially if political resistance or advocacy form any part of the motivation for being involved.
Then there is the issue of entry fees for competitions. For some time I refused to enter any of my work in events that charged a fee to submit. Like so many artists, I have lived in relative poverty my whole life, and have already freely invested time, talent, passion, skill, and whatever limited resources I have available, to produce the work. Then again, I know that there are significant expenses involved in staging competitions as well, and that organisers are usually giving a great deal of their time for free, as well as their energy, dedication, passion and skills (but watch out for the profit-making motives of some events). Still, wherever possible, I think it would be best to avoid entry fees. My personal view is that competitions don’t need to offer cash prizes. Without these, entry fees may not be needed, or kept to a bare minimum. I believe the honour and attention focused on winning works is ultimately the most valuable and practical reward.
Having said all that, I’m not really ‘against’ competitions. The shades of ambivalence I feel are mostly about idealism versus practical realities on the ground. While I have some hesitations, I recognise the value of competitions for generating excitement in artists and audiences, and for focusing and growing an artistic culture. Ultimately, the more ways to highlight creative work we love, the better.
In the specific case of videopoetry competitions, my personal experience has been positive in almost all instances of submitting, and of having work celebrated or declined. Rejection letters have been respectful, sometimes even encouraging. I find the videopoetry community to be unusually supportive of artists on the whole. But from past experience on the broader film festival circuit, and what I know of other artists’ experiences, this is not always the case in the wider world of the arts, where personal creative work can be treated much more like pure commodity. So I’m offering what I’ve said here as food for thought about the staging of arts competitions in general, and to encourage ongoing care in the treatment of artists and their work.
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Videopoetry appears to be ever-growing, with artists from many nations now engaged in the practice, and a collective body of work increasingly exhibited and appreciated worldwide. This hybrid of poetry and cinema (including all its various generic labels), has roots going back a long way in film history, especially in the areas of the experimental and avant garde. As Helen Dewbery has suggested in a recent article, its roots may be more ancient still, if we think of the genre as simply one of the myriad contemporary expressions of poetry itself. In this line of thinking, it might be said that poetry began as an oral tradition and has adapted to new technologies and approaches throughout history. Long may this fine lineage continue, in any of the old and new forms the future promises.
seed by Asim Khan
One of a series of videopoetry collaborations between the UK poet Asim Khan and video artist and experimental animator David C. Montgomery. Watch the others at Asim’s Vimeo page. The soundtrack on this one is courtesy of Maja Jantar (voice) and Kristof Lauwers (electronics).
