~ June 2023 ~

Torch by Aoife Lyall

A paean to the power of the imagination from Scottish poet Aoife Lyall and her publisher Bloodaxe Books, directed by Irish poet and filmmaker Luke Morgan, with music by his brother Jake Morgan. The poem evidently appears in an upcoming collection called The Day Before:

Focusing on the earliest weeks and months of the pandemic, these intimate and meticulous poems mark the lived experience of someone who must navigate a world she no longer understands, exploring first steps and last breaths, milestones, millstones, emigration, fly-tipping and the entire world to be found in the space behind the front door.

Act of Creation by Najm al-Din Razi

Act of Creation translates the words of 13th century Sufi poet Najm al-Din Razi into music video. The film-maker is Montreal-based Tanya Evanson, who also gives voice to the piece. The soundtrack comes from her music album Zenship. Evanson is also an award-winning poet and has produced four studio albums with musicians of African, Caribbean, European, Middle Eastern and South American descent.

Acknowledgements by Louise Wallace

On a sweltering day at the pools, monotony conspires to take us on an ethereal journey. A bored front desk attendant reads the acknowledgments of a paperback and while observing the swimmers she drifts into a daydream.
director’s webpage

New Zealand poet Louise Wallace as interpreted by Auckland-based director Arvind Eriksson and voice actor Elizabeth McRae. This 2021 film is included in a new article by poetry filmmaker Charles Olsen at a general-interest news site, How to film a poem — a wonderful survey of poetry filmmaking in New Zealand in preparation for the first Aotearoa Poetry Film Festival in November (submissions open).

Acknowledgements was a recommendation to Charles by another New Zealand director, Alfio Leotta, who called it “a beautiful, intelligent and funny film that inspired my decision to start experimenting with poetry film.”

Watershed by Tania Haberland

Watershed is a fusion of abstract music video and poetic text. Its maker, Carine Iriarte, calls this electropoetry. As with ambient electronic music, the piece is minimal, with mantric repetition of a fragment of a poem by Tania Haberland, whose spoken voice within the music is lush and lulling to the ear. The images meet the sound in fluid digital layers. The hypnotic experience of the video is like a trance meditation.

The Torrid Zone is another video from these artists featured before at Moving Poems, in that instance from a complete poem by Haberland.

Music and film are credited to Poetics of Reverie, a collaborative project of Iriarte.

Deep Into Another Night by Finn Harvor

https://vimeo.com/831442642

There are different sub-genres beneath the umbrella terms videopoetry and poetry film. Finn Harvor’s Deep Into Another Night is at the far end of a spectrum – a poetic film without words. It has a soft observational quality, delicately revealing poignant everyday moments in a quiet evening in South Korea.