Submissions are open for Cadence Video Poetry Festival
We missed their opening announcement back in April, but submissions are open until January 15 (late dealine; the regular deadline is December 15) for the Northwest Film Forum’s 2026 Cadence Video Poetry Festival in Seattle.
Verse meets visuals in motion during a series of cinepoem screenings, ekphrastic responses, and generative workshops celebrating National Poetry Month.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival is seeking video poems for inclusion in the April 2026 festival. Each selected video poem will receive an artist payment.
Video poetry is language as light. As an art form, video poetry is lucid and liminal—on the threshold of the literary and the moving image. It articulates the poetic image visually, rather than metaphorically—it shifts words from page to screen, from ink to light. A video poem makes meaning that would not exist if text was without image, image without text. It is language-based video work or a video-based poem. Video poetry is a literary genre presented as visual media.
Cadence showcases visual media that makes new meaning from the combination of text and moving image.
We welcome:
• Collaborations between video artists and writers;
• Video by poets creating video from, or as, their writing;
• Video artists creating poetic meaning through visual or aural text;
• Video work that’s poetically informed or poetry that’s visually informed that isn’t easily defined;
• and beyond!Any poems used for adaptations of pre-existing poetry must be in the public domain or else used with written consent of the author.
Cadence Video Poetry Festival is co-directed by Chelsea Werner-Jatzke and Rana San and hosted annually at Northwest Film Forum, satellite venues, and online.
Visit Film Freeway for the complete guidelines.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
