Posts By Dave Bonta
Lilies of the Field by Laura M Kaminski
Australian artist Marie Craven‘s video remix of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Missouri-based poet Laura M Kaminski. Craven recently blogged some process notes on three films she’s made with Kaminski’s poems, including this one:
I met Laura on social media after the first video, and our mutual membership of the Pool creative group put us in more contact after that. I sent her a message about making something new with her writing, and asked if she would be interested in responding in poetry to four pieces of royalty-free video footage I had found at VideoBlocks. She was interested in a continued collaboration and willing to write a new poem. But her first response to the images I sent was that they reminded her of a poem she had already written, ‘Lilies of the Field’. I loved the poem, agreed there was a fit, and so went to work. I decided text on screen might be the way to go for this video. To that end, I rearranged the line breaks in the poem to better suit the screen, which Laura welcomed in the final result. In response to the poem, I also found additional video images to go with the original ones I had sent Laura. One of these – the road at night shot – is by videographer, Gene Cornelius in Alaska, whose fantastic videography is featured in some of my previous videopoems. The music in the video is Slow Blizzard by Clutter (aka Shaun Blezard in Cumbria, UK). Shaun and I have been in online contact on and off for several years and this is a track I’ve loved since I first heard it in about 2010. Once the video was completed, I contacted Nic S. at The Poetry Storehouse to ask if she might be interested in publishing the poem and video at the site. They are both now there.
Dictionary Illustrations by Sarah Sloat
Sarah Sloat is an American poet who works as journalist in Germany, and whose poems appear widely in print and online journals—including at The Poetry Storehouse, where Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon found the text for this film. As he notes in a recent blog post, it’s the first in a series of at least five films based on Poetry Storehouse poems that he has in the works.
I really loved the poem (the visuals) and the reading (so good) by DM.
Making a track for this reading was fun;
[listen on SoundCloud]
Broken rhythms crashing in a fleeting piano. Not much more was needed for this.
For the visuals I wanted to go back to my childhood.
As a kid I loved hanging ’round the local market. The colours, the noise, the shouting, the smell,…
I thought it might be a good idea to match this poem/soundtrack with images and footage from IICADOM.Combining images from different market places with shots from local animals filmed at several travels. It gives the video the right amount of colour and naïve amazement I was looking for.
A reminder, for any poets who might be reading this: the deadline for submissions to The Poetry Storehouse is coming up on February 28. After that it will transition to archive mode, adding new remixes (including videos) only up through September.
Gentlemen by Marcus Slease
Like contemporary lyric poetry itself, poetry film these days is overwhelmingly serious in tone. Here’s an exception. Bristol-based filmmaker Graeme Maguire and poet Marcus Slease have produced “an experiment in letting go of perfection and critical thinking” that’s also highly entertaining in a Rabelaisian sort of way. Let me reproduce Maguire’s Vimeo description in full:
DIRECTOR: Graeme Maguire
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: Sarah Maguire
POETRY: Marcus Slease
SOUNDS: Annie Gardiner of Hysterical Injury
STARRING: Rick Hambleton, Natalie Brown, Mo, Jamie Lindsay
THANKS TO: The Cube, Scubaboy Inc, Floating Harbour Studios, Geneva StopGentlemen is a poetry film project in collaboration with poet Marcus Slease. The film was created for an event called Uptight in Bristol, the name of which was the inspiration for the theme of the film. Inspired by Robert Frank’s ‘Pull My Daisy’, a silent film overlaid with jazz music and poetry by Jack Kerouac, Gentlemen is shot on super-8 and contains no dialogue. It is accompanied by a poetic narration by Marcus and an interpretive bass guitar sound track by Annie Gardiner.
The film is also an experiment in letting go of perfection and critical thinking. It was shot on one 3 minute roll of super-8 with all editing done in-camera. This meant planning and timing out all the shots before the shoot and then shooting each one in sequence using a stop watch. After processing the film the result is a fully edited film. This also meant that we could only do one take of each shot so the actors HAD to get it right first time!
Sarah Maguire is also a poet, and with Slease is the co-founder of Uptight, which has an interesting mission:
[I]nstead of moaning about not being able to connect with other British poets, we want to join forces with artists in other mediums and create a united front against the thugs that control the literary, political and social world of this country. Just as the Beats were influenced by Bop Jazz, and the New York school poets inspired by painters, we feel more at home with Bristol’s DIY artists/musicians/activists.
We are two poets, Sarah Maguire (Bristol) and Marcus Slease (London) that to put it mildly are sick of traditional intellectual, stiff, PHD driven British poetry and feel obligated to do something …anything ….to make a change.
We have created Uptight for our own mental health and general punk fuck you activism! We will hold regular events that will bring together poetry, music and film. Our events will be queer friendly, woman friendly and we will make every effort to be inclusive and engage with artists of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Uptight is working on the first publication of a print (YES real recycled paper) and online magaZINE that will show case all that is truly modern in art and poetry.
Red Kites at Uffington by Martin Malone
A wonderful poem and film from Martin Malone (text) and Helen Dewbery (film and production), with music by Colin Heaney.
News round-up: Motionpoems’ Kickstarter; Dylan Thomas movie; videopoems on Montreal poetry festival website
With just four days to go, Motionpoems’ Kickstarter campaign for its innovative weeCinema outdoor theater is still $15,000 short of its $20,000 goal. As previously reported here, a mere $10 pledge qualifies one to answer their call for poetry films to be screened in the weeCinema during the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Todd Boss announced on Facebook a few days ago that “Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler emails today to say he’s a huge Motionpoems fan. He pledged $200 to our newest project.” But it won’t happen without a lot more pledges. Do give if you can.
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In not-so-wee cinema news, the Welsh newspaper Daily Post reports that
A movie about iconic poet Dylan Thomas, which stars a Holyhead-born actor and music by a top Welsh rocker, is to be released in the United States.
Set Fire to the Stars tells the story of a week in the life of hell-raising Welsh poet Dylan Thomas as he embarked on a disastrous tour of American universities in the 1950s.
By his side is young poetry professor and admirer John Malcolm Brinnin, whose philosophy for looking after the firebrand is “I’ll improvise”, but a fragile friendship is stretched beyond the limit.
Holyhead-born Celyn Jones stars as Thomas and he also co-wrote the script while Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys of Bethesda provides the original soundtrack. Brinnin is played by Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood.
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Finally, a poetry festival set for June in Montreal is foregrounding videopoetry. If, like me, you don’t understand French, here’s what Google Translate makes of it:
The House of Poetry of Montreal, in partnership with the Self media arts center Vidéographe launched an innovative advertising campaign in several districts of the city. On more than one thousand posters in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighborhood, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Mile End, Ville-Marie, Rosemont Petite-Patrie and in the city center and Old Montreal, passers equipped with a smartphone can now scan a QR code and instantly watch videos-eight poems as many poets and video artists.
The viewer-reader at the end of each video-poem purchase the book of poetry which is taken the extract by a single click. It will then be directed to the website of a bookseller or publisher. He can also view all the video-poems on the www.videopoeme.com or at home in the Plateau-Mont-Royal culture, which showcases the works continuously for the duration of the Festival.
Through this joint development program for stimulating the House of Poetry allows several poets disseminate their work in a new form and touch and new readers. The expertise of Vidéographe in the field of media arts opens wide the door of new technologies to the current Quebec poetry.
Assuming that’s more or less the gist of it, that sounds pretty cool. And the videopoems are already available to watch on the website.
(Hat-tip for the second and third links to Thomas Zendegiacomo del Bel at the ZEBRA Facebook group page)
Conference on poetry, film and technology at FACT: three views
I was happy to see a comprehensive, 17-page report [PDF] on the Feb 5 Send and Receive conference about “Poetry, Film and Technology in the 21st Century” at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) from the poet John Davies, A.K.A. Shedman. His highly literate and personal take on the conference gives one a good sense of the sorts of issues under discussion and the often conflicting opinions of the participants. Davies also did his own research on poetry film to flesh out the article, which he titled “Send and Receive: misaligned model or magnificent mix?” It concludes with a brief description of each film shown. Check it out.
Davies includes his reactions to two presentations that are also online. Zata Kitowski has posted her talk [PDF] on the semiotics of poetry film at the PoetryFilm website. And while it doesn’t relate to poetry film per se, George Szirtes’ presentation on how he uses Twitter and Facebook to draft poems is nevertheless very interesting, and may be read on his blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).
Szirtes also shared some informal reactions to the conference, including the poetry films, in a post on Facebook that’s fully public (i.e., you don’t have to be a Facebook friend of a friend, or even a logged-in user, to read it). Although his assessment of the films was a bit less critical than Davies’, they agreed on which was the stand-out: Dream Poem by Danny Caswell Dann Casswell. “The Dream Poem won it for me, because the idea of the poem was the idea of the film—the one was the other,” Szirtes writes. And Davies called it “superb – witty, clever but thoughtful animation that played with the media. A true poetry film with the right mix and balance.” Unfortunately, I can’t find any trace of this film on the web. Hopefully that will change at some point. It’s available to view on the PoetryFilm site.
Memoires / Memoirs by Paul Snoek
A highly inventive videopoem from the indefatigable Swoon (Marc Neys), who described how it came about in a blog post last month:
Note to self: make more ‘Belgian’ videopoems…
So I made one to start with. One I wanted to make for a long time, but never had the right idea for.Now I did.
The poem ‘Memoires / Memoirs’ is by Belgian poet / painter Paul Snoek.[…]
First I created a soundtrack so I had a time frame to work with once I would start filming. I used the recording of the poem that I found on Lyrikline. [listen on Soundcloud]
My idea for the visual was simple, but effective I believe.
‘Cut up flowers and create a house in the most simplistic manner and then destroy the house’
I filmed the whole process from different angles and with different lenses. Editing came naturally once I had the music and the visuals. I adapted the pace and feel of the soundtrack until there was a sense of unity. A translation by James S. Holmes (from ‘A quarter century of poetry from Belgium’, 1970) was used as subtitles.
Memoires is currently a featured film at The Continental Review.
شاعروں سے ڈرو / Be afraid of poets by Zeeshan Sahil
Be afraid of poets –
they have a hand-grenade
made of dreams…
The late Pakistani poet Zeeshan Sahil “has often been praised for writing in a simple yet profound manner”—a simplicity admirably captured in this short film from Umang, directed by Fahad Naveed and narrated by Mahvash Faruqi with a performance by dancer Suhaee Abro.
Be sure to click on the CC icon for the English subtitles, translated by Nauman Naqvi, or click through to the Umang website to read the full text in English and Urdu.
I Too Come From by Luisa A. Igloria
This new poetry film by the always interesting Lori H. Ersolmaz is an adaptation of a poem from The Poetry Storehouse by Luisa A. Igloria, and includes the author’s own reading in the soundtrack. Ersolmaz incorporated archival footage from the newly available Pond5 Public Domain Project and sound effects from Freesound.org.
Read Lori’s process notes, “Beginning with the End in Mind,” at Moving Poems Magazine.
Carbon Culture offers $1000 poetry film prize
Carbon Culture is a print and online journal at “the intersection of technology + literature + art.” This week they announced a unique poetry film contest:
Poetry Film Prize
We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film using the complete text of John Gosslee’s poem “Portrait of an Inner Life.” The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across a number of networks, note in a one page ad alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. All entries are considered for sponsored entry to our list of film festivals and poetry film festivals. Deadline for submissions is January 1, 2016.
Rules for Submission
1. Create a video adaption of John Gosslee’s poem “Portrait of an Inner Life” using the full text of the poem and the author’s name
2. Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live
3. Submit the piece as an Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.Prize Announcements will be made in April 2016
Film Types
All visual and textual interpretations of the poem are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal or non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.
Eligibility
The prize is open to students, individuals and teams.
Click through for the text of the poem (which is very brief) and the link to submit. Fjords Review (which Gosslee edits) included the poem in a video interview, filmed by Roberta Hall at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco:
