Posts By Dave Bonta
Videopoems of place featured at Connotation Press
This month in her Third Form column at Connotation Press, Erica Goss presents “nine poetry films using the following criteria: first, the native language of the poet or filmmaker had to be the language used in narration, and second, the country of the poet or filmmaker had to be prominent in the video.” Her choices are all films I remember with fondness, and it’s interesting to see them presented side by side. I’ve shared so many videopoems at Moving Poems now, it’s easy to lose track of the outstanding ones, so further acts of curation like Erica’s are invaluable. Go look.
Chinatowns by Boey Kim Cheng
http://vimeo.com/64731664
A very short filmpoem about exile and belonging by Laura Wu.
Call for submissions: Liberated Words Poetry Film Festival 2013
A new videopoetry festival is planned for Bristol, UK in October. The deadline for submissions is June 30th.
Festival organisers Sarah Tremlett and Lucy English in conjunction with Colin Brown of Poetry Can welcome videopoems of 3 minutes or less to be screened at Liberated Words poetry film festival, as part of Bristol Poetry Festival, October 2013.
There are two separate categories for this year’s inaugural festival:
Four by Four
Videopoems of three minutes or less are invited as a response to a printed poem by four poets.
The poets and poems are:
Philip Gross: Heaps
Lucy English: from ‘Take Me to the City’
Jo Bell: The Shipwright’s Love Song
Johnny Fluffypunk: Bill Blake’s Birthday Cake for Adrian MitchellWinning entries of each poem will be screened as the highlight of the festival at the Arnolfini, Bristol.
Liberated Words II
We are also inviting videopoetry makers to submit 3 minutes of their most recent work broadly supporting the theme of ‘liberated words’.
The selected poetry films will be shown at a Liberated Words II screening at the Arnolfini Bristol.
See the announcement post for background and other information.
The Death of Me (trailer) by Howie Good
A poetry book trailer that appears to give a pretty good indication of the tone and flavor of the book. (I say that having read a number of Howie Good‘s books and chapbooks, though not this particular one yet.) Sizable chunks of text alternate with underwater footage of swimming penguins, apparently shot on a mobile phone at an aquarium. Unlike so many trailers for poetry books from micropresses, where the initiative to make a video originates with the author, this was made by the publishers themselves.
This is a video promoting the launch of Howie Good’s limited edition poetry collection ‘The Death of Me’ through Pig Ear Press. The text is from Howie’s book, the video was shot in Basel Zoo and the soundtrack was created on a ukulele. The video and audio were created by Mr [Pete] Lally.
Pig Ear Press are a (very) small press using letterpress printing and handbinding to create limited run books of quality. You can purchase Howie’s book and see information about previous publications by visiting pigearpress.co.uk.
I’m a little late in sharing this, but the press run doesn’t seem to be sold out quite yet.
Sleep (Der Schlaf) by Georg Trakl
An animation by A.E.E. Viljamaa. Here’s the text of the German original:
Der Schlaf
Verflucht ihr dunklen Gifte,
Weißer Schlaf!
Dieser höchst seltsame Garten
Dämmernder Bäume
Erfüllt von Schlangen, Nachtfaltern,
Spinnen, Fledermäusen.
Fremdling! Dein verlorner Schatten
Im Abendrot,
Ein finsterer Korsar
Im salzigen Meer der Trübsal.
Aufflattern weiße Vögel am Nachtsaum
Über stürzenden Städten
Von Stahl.
Three poems by Michelle Matthees
This is the rest, another of Kathy McTavish‘s mesmerizing pieces of sound art and kinestatic imagery. Three poems by Michelle Matthees in type form—”The Gardner Hotel,” “Bouquets” and “The Rest”—scroll slowly up the screen against a background (or is it a foreground?) of shifting shapes and tones.
It Lêste Ljipaai / The Last Lapwing Egg by Siem de Vlas
A lament for the loss of tradition and ties to the land, in the language of one of Europe’s most deeply rooted peoples, the Frisians. Richard van der Laan‘s description at Vimeo is worth quoting at length:
In Fryslân there is a cultural-historical competition to find the first lapwing egg of the year. This visual poem captures the spirit of a tradition, which is bound for extinction.
I made this film in admiration of my father. When I was a little boy he took me into the meadows to find eggs. I still remember the beauty of the landscape, the sound of the birds and the excitement when we found eggs. Sadly we never found the first egg. I also remember the cold of the wind and tired feelings in my small legs. Often asking my father to carry me on his back.
DISCLAIMER: No real eggs were harmed during the making of this film. We only used empty egg shells. My father stopped collecting eggs years ago.
Gathering lapwing eggs is prohibited by the European Union, but Fryslân (a northern province of the Netherlands) was granted an exception for cultural-historical reasons. The Frisian exception was removed in 2005 by a court, which determined that the Frisian executive councillors had not properly followed procedure. As of 2006 it is again allowed to look for lapwing eggs between 1 March and 9 April, though harvesting those eggs is now forbidden.
Lapwings belong in meadows. The name lapwing describes the sound its broad wings make when in flight. Lapwings are also known as peewits, thanks to their shrill call. They are very vocal during mating season and have glorious courting rituals in the air. In the spring, the male makes several simple hollows in the ground and the female chooses one to make brood her eggs in. Both males and females brood the eggs and care for the chicks. Should their nest with chicks be threatened, they will defend their young with all their might. Sometimes, you see them flying after a harrier, constantly attacking the raptor. If it really gets serious, they will pretend to have a broken wing, luring the predator away from the nest.
The Frisian languages are a closely related group of Germanic languages, spoken by about 500,000 members of Frisian ethnic groups, who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. The Frisian languages are the second closest living languages to English, after Scots.
Filmed at Vegelinsoord (West Frisian: Vegelinsoard) a small village in Skarsterlân in the province Fryslân of the Netherlands.Camera / Production : Richard van der Laan
Egg collector : Hans van der Laan
Poem writer / reading : Siem de Vlas
Sound recording : Richard van der Laan
Sound design : Maarten Boogerman
Siem de Vlas, a landscape architect as well as a poet, also provided the reading in a previous Frisian-language poetry film by Richard van der Laan, It Noarderland (The Northern Land), for a poem by Durk van der Ploeg.
Couch by Jim Dine
http://vimeo.com/35179300
An animation by Alex Itin, who writes:
two months turned to two minutes talking about two years, she tells me. Well there is the words of the great painter Jim Dine and the music of the great Javier Hernandez-Miyares and the a special shout out to Steve Pacia and always Ponyo and Leo and 1000 other scans…. ummm… next.
For more on Jim Dine, see the Wikipedia.
The Lost Boy by John Glenday
This is Sonatorrek (Loss of Sons), Filmpoem 30 by Alastair Cook, with sound by Luca Nasciuti.
The work is based on Glenday’s Uncle Alexander, who was in the D’ Battery 307th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery and died in the Battle of the Sambre on November 4th 1918, the same battle as Wilfred Owen. Glenday’s Grandfather, who was a blacksmith, signed the papers allowing his son to go into the Forces before he was of age.
The footage is used under a Creative Commons licence from archive.org
For more on John Glenday, see the Scottish Poetry Library website.
