Posts By Dave Bonta
“And did those feet in ancient time” by William Blake
Continuing the theme of videopoems that riff on television conventions, here’s a poetry promo from the BBC disguised as a sporting news story from the BBC. The poem is referred to as “Jerusalem,” but it’s actually from the Preface to Milton. A popular hymn adaptation by Hubert Parry a century after Blake wrote it is reponsible for the new title, according to the Wikipedia.
The poem was inspired by the apocryphal story that a young Jesus, accompanied by his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, travelled to the area that is now England and visited Glastonbury. The legend is linked to an idea in the Book of Revelation (3:12 and 21:2) describing a Second Coming, wherein Jesus establishes a new Jerusalem. The Christian church in general, and the English Church in particular, used Jerusalem as a metaphor for Heaven, a place of universal love and peace.
That’s one of those metaphors that would seem to have outlived its relevance, except perhaps in the writing of the late Mahmoud Darwish.
Some Last Questions by W. S. Merwin
Another section from the production Men Think They Are Better Than Grass by the San Francisco-based Deborah Slater Dance Theatre, based on poems by W. S. Merwin. The two featured dancers here are Travis Rowland and Breton Tyner Bryan. The inclusion of sound effects from the TV quiz show Jeopardy is brilliant, I thought.
Last Thursday, Merwin was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.
Stealing by Carol Ann Duffy
Update: this video is no longer online.
Directed by Gerard Docherty. Aside from the sloppy spelling, this is a fine video and seemed worth sharing. Duffy is, of course, the current Poet Laureate of Great Britain. I assume this video was made without her permission, and thus represents a kind of stealing itself — and/or an homage and act of generosity, depending on your view of intellectual property rights.
I’m going back to posting five videos a week here, at least until I can shrink the current queue of draft posts. So much good stuff coming out these days!
Look Through a Complex Eye and See 1000 of Everything by Zachary Schomburg
Layne Braunstein directed, designed and animated this film for Born Magazine, where the original Flash version still lives (along with the text). Thanks to producer Fake Love for uploading it to Vimeo.
Zachary Schomburg’s website appears to be out of commission, but he does have a blog, as well as a Vimeo account — turns out he makes videopoems himself, too. (Look for examples here in the coming weeks.) The poem is from his second book, Scary, No Scary.
Oblogo Concerto by Atukwei Okai
Ghanaian poetry videos are a little thin on the ground, but I found three in the International Poetry Festival of Medellín’s massive video archive (African poets section), and was fascinated by Okai’s dramatic style and use of extreme alliteration. Atukwei Okai “was the first to try to take African poetry back to one of its primal origins, in percussion, by deliberately violating the syntax and lexicon of English, creating his own rhythms through startling phonetic innovations,” according to the Nigerian scholar of African Studies Femi Osofisan. In typical Medellín video style, we are shown the audience’s reactions — or lack thereof — as the poet recites.
For more on the festival, see the Guardian Weekly article, “Medellín’s poems of peace.” I would love to see the same kind of media coverage given to this festival as to the World Cup, at least on Univision. But I imagine it would have to be turned into a poetry slam-style competition for that to happen, and that would probably clash with the festival’s peace agenda.
Literalism run amok!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4WZW8bdmk8
The folks at Weirdo Productions demonstrate what happens when poems are taken too literally, using as an example the Carol Ann Duffy poem “A Child’s Sleep.” I love this, because overly literal videopoems are one of the banes of my existence as curator of Moving Poems.
Video-hosting news
YouTube has added a vuvuzela button to all its videos. As a fan of noise rock and dissonant avant-garde classical, I’m cheered by this decision to embrace the sonic chaos of the 2010 World Cup. Sadly, however, this option is not included on embeds, so Moving Poems visitors will have to click through to YouTube itself to hear Sylvia Plath or Linh Dinh accompanied by the drone of a cheap plastic horn.
In other video-blogging news from the Blog Herald, the folks at Blogger have dramatically improved their free video-hosting system, but they still don’t allow embedding. Given that Blogger also doesn’t have an export tool that allows people to take their files with them, people who upload videos to Blogger at this point are basically consigning their uploads to a Blogger lockbox.
SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse Call for Entries
Heather Haley sent along this press release:
SEE THE VOICE – Visible Verse 10th Anniversary Celebration & Festival Call for Entries and Official Guidelines
Please send in your videopoem by Sept. 1, 2010.
- Visible Verse seeks videopoems, with a 15 minutes maximum duration.
- Either official language of Canada is acceptable, though if the video is in French, an English-dubbed or -subtitled version is required for consideration. Videos may originate in any part of the world.
- Works will be judged by their innovation, cohesion and literary merit. The ideal videopoem is a wedding of word and image, the voice seen as well as heard.
- Please, do not send documentaries as they are outside the featured genre.
- Videopoem producers should provide a brief bio, full name, and contact information in a cover letter. There is no official application form nor entry fee.
Send, at your own risk, videopoems and poetry films/preview copies (which cannot be returned) in DVD NTSC format to: VISIBLE VERSE c/o Pacific Cinémathèque, 200-1131 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 2L7, Canada. Selected artists will be notified and receive a standard screening fee.
For more information, see below, or contact Heather Haley at: hshaley@emspace.com
In 1999 the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, the first of its kind in Canada, began as an effort of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, a non-profit literary arts organization dedicated to expanding the reach of poetry through new media with programs such as Telepoetics Vancouver and the Edgewise Café electronic magazine. The VVF became critically regarded owing to its progressive regard for spoken word in cinema, presenting poets both in performance and on the big screen. The audience could explore the merits and distinctions of poetry rendered in these two forms, stage and screen, sparking new dialogue as to the essential nature of poetry. The festival then built upon that foundation, with widened explorations into poetry cinema across national frontiers. They presented significant new works from Europe and the Americas, and continued to offer Canadian audiences a remarkably broad selection of new videopoems from their own country.
Pacific Cinémathèque has been the VVF’s partner since 2000 and throughout the dissolution of the Edgewise. Founder Heather Haley continues to provide a sustaining venue for the presentation of new and artistically significant videopoetry as host and curator of SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse. And owing to Vancouver’s strength in the film and television production industries, Haley has been able to cultivate critical interest between filmmakers and poets, with positive consequences for both.
To celebrate entering their second decade of showcasing videopoetry, Haley and the Pacific Cinémathèque are presenting two screenings this year as well as poetry performances, a panel discussion and an awards gala, Friday Nov. 19 and Saturday Nov. 20.
“I reason, Earth is short” by Emily Dickinson
Another animation by Francesca Talenti. You can watch dozens, maybe hundreds of Emily Dickinson videos on YouTube and not find anything so free of cliché as this.
I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt,
But, what of that?I reason, we could die—
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?I reason, that in Heaven—
Somehow, it will be even—
Some new Equation, given—
But, what of that?
