Posts By Dave Bonta
(From an Awakened Sleep) by Charlotte Hamrick
https://vimeo.com/111364503
This is not the first time that Nic S.—known for her great reading voice—has made a videopoem with text-on-screen rather than voiceover, but it may be her most satisfying example of that sort of videopoem to date. The text, by New Orleans-based poet Charlotte Hamrick, comes from The Poetry Storehouse, and the music is by Rob Bethel, Todd Brunel and Matt Samolis, with Todd Brunel on clarinet.
Burning House by Jovan Mays and Theo Wilson
Amid racial tensions in communities such as Ferguson, Missouri, and following the unwarranted deaths of young black men like Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, two slam poets confront what it means to be black men in America and in their communities. Theo Wilson, once a victim of police brutality, delves into his internal struggle of dealing with the past encounter, remembering how powerless he felt in the face of his oppressor, and his ensuing resolve to change the rules of the game. Beneath the smoldering anger and aftermath of police violence is a growing disquietude toward the future of race relations. Jovan Mays, the poet laureate of Aurora, Colorado, uses his spoken word to express the turmoil of emotions and experiences inherently attached to growing up a black boy in America.
(Vimeo description)
These two related poetry films are by Mary I. Stevens, an associate producer of digital video at CNBC. They deserve to be seen widely in the wake of yet another grotesque miscarriage of justice in the racist police state that the United States has become. Those of us who have the luxury of merely wallowing in outrage and not fearing for our lives (yet), simply because we happen to have been born with white skin, need to hear the testimony of the victims of police violence and humiliation, and ask ourselves whether our anxious calls for peaceful protest aren’t motivated more out of a desire to sweep unpleasant realities under the rug rather than to actually confront the glaring inequities in our society.
Jovan Mays and Theo E. J. Wilson, A.K.A. Lucifury, are members of the Slam Nuba team, who won the National Poetry Slam in 2011. The first film, an artful blend of interview and poetry, contains a few excerpts from the performance of “Burning House” featured in the second film, but devotes much more space to a poem recited by Mays, “To the Black Boys.” The song “Look Down Lord,” included in both films, is performed by Dee Galloway.
Shepilov Love (Marion Barry Is) by Kenneth Carroll
To mark the passing of legendary Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.—a unique figure in the American political landscape, to say the least—here’s a terrific performance poem by Kenneth Carroll, mixed with the drumming of a street musician named Vinzee. It’s from the “eclectic documentary series” The Angle Show from Park Triangle Productions and director Gemal Woods. (They do quite a bit of poetry, which is really refreshing for a documentary series.) The video was posted back in December 2011, and the accompanying text notes:
We wanted to have fun especially with this great piece by Kenneth Carroll. I think we did. He is a genius.
Vinzee…just met him traveling. He was gracious to share with us.
Kenneth Carroll doesn’t appear to have a website, but here’s his page at the Poetry Foundation.
(Hat-tip: Sandra Beasley on Facebook)
Athens International Film Poetry Festival set for Nov. 28; tickets on sale for PoetryFilm Solstice
We have updates on two poetry film festivals this week. The International Film Poetry Festival in Athens, which had previously been advertised as coming some time in December, is in fact going to take place next Friday, November 28, according to its website:
The yearly International Film Poetry Festival will be held for third time in Greece on Friday 28/11/2014 2014 in Athens. Approximately 1000 people attended the festival last year.
There will be two different zones of the festival. The first zone will include video poems, visual poems, short film poems and cinematic poetry by artists from all over the world (America, Asia, Europe, Africa). The second zone will include cross-platform collaborations of sound producers and music groups with poets and visual artists in live improvisations.
The International Film Poetry Festival 2014 attempts to create an open public space for the creative expression of all tendencies and streams of contemporary visual poetry.
It is very important to notice that this festival is a part of the counter-culture activities of Void Network and + the Institute [for Experimental Arts] and will be non-sponsored, free entrance, non commercial and non profit event. The festival will cover the costs (2000 posters, 15.000 flyers, high quality technical equipment e.t.c.) from the incomes of the bar of the festival.
Etc.
For those of you who prefer a bit of advanced planning in your lives, tickets are on sale for PoetryFilm’s last event of 2014 at the ICA Cinema in London:
PoetryFilm Solstice
21 Dec 2014
3:00 pm | Cinema 1 | £7.00 to £11.00“Founded by artist Zata Kitowski over a decade ago, the PoetryFilm art project continues to play with the avant-garde” – aqnb, 2014
PoetryFilm celebrates experimental poetryfilms, art films, text films, sound films, silent films, poet-filmmaker collaborations, auteur films, films based on poems, poems based on films, and other avant-garde text/image/sound screening and performance material.
The PoetryFilm project has resulted in over 60 events at cinemas, galleries, literary festivals and academic institutions featuring films, poetry readings, live performances and talks. PoetryFilm Solstice will feature a programme of short poetryfilms and live performances curated by Zata Kitowski – the full programme will be posted here shortly.
PoetryFilm is supported by Arts Council England.
Call for submissions + new documentary on Motionpoems’ “Arrivals and Departures” installation
If, like me, you’ve been wondering just how Motionpoems managed the logistical hurdles of projecting films onto the front of a train station, what it looked like, and how it was received by the general public, this great little “micro-documentary” gives a pretty good indication.
If you’re a U.S.-based poet and would like the chance to be considered for next year’s version of Arrivals and Departures, the deadline is fast approaching: November 30! I got this reminder in my email inbox yesterday from the CRWROPPS-B list:
SUBMIT TO ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES YEAR 2!
See your poem turned into a film and projected onto the 1,000-foot neoclassical facade of Saint Paul’s Union Depot in Motionpoems’ latest annual public art installation. Poems accepted on the theme of “Arrivals and Departures” through Nov 30. Broad interpretations of the theme encouraged. Poems accepted from all non-Minnesota U.S. residents (Minnesota poets will be invited to submit again in Year 4).
MORE ABOUT THE CONTEST:
Entrants are urged to consider the theme of “Arrivals and Departures” in broad terms. Although this project celebrates the newly revitalized Depot, the Depot isn’t the project’s subject. It’s just the canvas upon which the poems will be experienced. Entrants should consider not what the Depot is, but what it represents, as a source of diversity, culture, commerce, influence, inspiration, and exploration. Also consider the Depot as an early manifestation of newer depots in modern life, which may include the International Space Station, for example, or other ways in which mankind is ‘departing’ or ‘arriving’ culturally, intellectually, spiritually, etc. Poems about trains are less encouraged. Poems published within the last five years will be considered in addition to previously unpublished poems.WHERE TO SUBMIT:
Submissions can only be made online via Submittable at https://motionpoems.submittable.com/submit/34138. Submit one poem only; multiple submissions will disqualify you. The poem should be no more than 500 words. Translations are not eligible, but poems published within the last five years are eligible. Use the “bio” and “cover letter” fields to tell us who you are, how you learned about this project, and why you would like to be part of it.DEADLINE:
Entry deadline is November 30, 2014. No entries will be accepted after the deadline.WHAT HAPPENS NEXT:
All finalist poems will be presented to filmmakers, but only a handful will be developed into films. That handful of poems will be selected by participating filmmakers based on individual preference, as part of an open call to filmmakers in partnership with Independent Filmmaker Project New York. Motionpoems does not guarantee the number of films to be made. Remember: Not all finalist poems will be made into films.MORE INFORMATION:
To read the complete guidelines and submit: https://motionpoems.submittable.com/submit/34138To read the Official Terms of Entry: http://www.motionpoems.com/a-and-d-2-terms/
For more about Arrivals and Departures Year 1: http://www.motionpoems.com/arrivals-departures-at-st-pauls-union-depot/
To learn more about Motionpoems and watch 5 seasons of motionpoems: http://www.motionpoems.com
In other Motionpoems news, there’s an interesting note on their About page regarding their next regular season of films: “Season 6 is a special collaboration with VIDA: WOMEN IN THE ARTS, designed to balance the Motionpoems ecosystem with more poetry by women.” I’ll be looking forward to that. VIDA is a good organization.
Muscle Memory by Michael Biegner
The last of the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest runner-up poems was written in response to the very same footage by Lori H. Ersolmaz that prompted the winning poem by Amy Miller. This time, the poet is Michael Biegner:
Muscle Memory
This ocean is a gray tidal yank,
That speaks with a blurred accent
of wild greens and blue – the yellow
skin, the sad-eyed light,
these make up the neurons of dark storms.
This frame is a blight of opaque water and dying
movement: go on and be brave.
Sea birds carry word of a drowning in the canals,
To all the lost faces,
To the pink buildings. Helium
lifts the mylar thinking. Salt drops are alive everywhere.
Slog on, unfocused – to the place
where breathing cannot be felt,
where it is not the kind of music we can play by ear.
The resulting film is, I think, quite different from Backward Like a Ghost — which suggests just how central the poem is to our experience of a poetry film. Peter Danbury is the reader.
Biegner described his writing process as follows:
Writing is a generative process for me. I chose Lori’s film because it was rich in composite images. I quickly realized that I could view her work as one views an abstract painting. I found a cozy corner in my favorite coffee shop one afternoon and played the video over and over, each time writing feelings, emotions, suggestive links that came to me as I watched the video and took in the soundtrack. I did not worry about line breaks (I tend to write for voice anyway, so most breaks occur during natural breath points).
After developing the mass of the poem, I began to whittle it away, almost like a sculptor chiseling away flecks of marble. I wanted the end piece to be stark, because the sound track made me feel a barrenness; its repetitiveness paints a great dearth.
The recurring theme of water in Lori’s work also finds its way into this poem. I start with the ocean tugging, suggesting muscle, gravity, a primal force. The drowning is an invented conceit implying the inherent dangers of water. It highlights the struggle of making one’s way (slogging) through primal forces that surround us.
The looseness of the focus of many of the shots connects me to memory: its fragility, its subjectivity. The flashing lightning reminded me of firing neurons of a brain. So when I was done, I had a poem that dealt with these two diametrically opposed aspects of humanity: the physicality of existence, and the realm of memory where we seem to dwell.
Muscle memory, of course, is the way the human body is able to repeat movements with little or no input from the brain. Lori’s video evoked in me the contrast of what we plan versus what we do; what we contemplate in action versus what we allow ourselves to do from some other parts of us.
Lori Ersolmaz has already written at length about the making of her first film from the contest, but had this to add about Muscle Memory:
I am honored to have been able to work with not one, but two wonderful poems from the Poetry Storehouse 2014 Anniversary Contest.
When I received Michael’s poem I re-read it numerous times and felt that it was important to let it breathe. The poem gave me the room to spread it out from beginning to end. I find it incredibly interesting that visuals can help stoke emotions across mediums in subtle, varied, yet common ways—vice versa! Michael’s poem provided a wonderful screenplay that in many ways touched upon my own emotions when I first created the film. For instance, at the beginning, “Yellow skin, sad-eyed light, these make-up the neurons of dark storms…” is a concept about capitalism that I often grapple with and captured my feelings perfectly. I wanted to allow that idea to merge with the imagery from the very beginning and is why there’s such a long break until we hear a voice again. Peter Danbury’s narrative arrived the night before I started editing and his inflection and annunciation of Michael’s poem clicked with me immediately and influenced my use of space within the three-minute film.
I am grateful for everyone who I had the opportunity to collaborate with on the Poetry Storehouse Anniversary Contest, but in hindsight I wish I had more time to actually spend conversing with the poets before I finished the composed pieces. I feel in the future I can gain additional perspective if I connect with them in advance of the final cut. Nonetheless, the process I experienced while working with and viewing all the poems and remixes for the contest will stay with me for some time.
Thanks again to all the poets and filmmakers who took part in this challenging and, I think, ground-breaking contest. We’re all the richer for it.
Resumé by Dorothy Parker
A wonderful little animated poem about suicide. The author’s own recitation is in the soundtrack, along with music by Liam D. Brooks. Tim Bentley is the director and animator. Here’s his description at Vimeo:
Resumé is a dark, macabre little tale about life and the dangers of leaving it too soon. The film is based on the poem ‘Resumé’, written in 1928 by Dorothy Parker, the legendary critic, writer and drinker of 1920s New York.
Without the help of many public domain archives it would never have been completed. Below is a list of all those that helped and to whom I’m very grateful:
Audio recording courtesy of the Dorothy Parker Society:
dorothyparker.com/dpsny.htmarchive.org
publicdomainreview.org
davidrumsey.com
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
wellcomeimages.org
Libro de huellas (The Book of Traces) by Ángel Guinda
I’m tethering my life
so the storm doesn’t escape me.To think
costs the unthinkable.
A series of gnomic pronouncements, as if in response to an unseen interrogator, accompany shots of the poet’s visible traces: his identity papers, fingerprints, and typewritten words. Ángel Guinda stars in this gem of a book trailer, the work of Charles Olsen, a New Zealander currently residing in Spain, and the production company Antena Blue. (Be sure to click the CC icon on the lower right to read the subtitles—a very good English translation.)
This was one of two Olsen/Antena Blue films selected for screening at ZEBRA this year. Olsen wrote about his experience at ZEBRA for the big idea/te aria nui.
The second film poem, included in the section “Wracking Your Brains” – our preoccupations with the past, doubts and spiritual unrest – was a piece we made for the Spanish poet Ángel Guinda, “Libro de Huellas” (The Book of Traces) where, in a series of striking aphorisms, he reflects on memory, religion, and power.
[…]
I began making film poems using my own poetry and that of my wife, the Colombian writer Lilián Pallares, with whom I direct the production company Antena Blue, “The observed word”. There is a great freedom to explore all the aspects of the image, sound, text, words, narrative, pace, and as a poet-filmmaker it is not necessarily the poem that has to come first. It may be an image or a personal story that lends itself to a poetic treatment later inspiring the text or a filmmaker may piece together fragments of dialogues, sounds and images to create a collage of words and images.
Foretold by Luisa A. Igloria
Marc Neys, A.K.A. Swoon, probably needs no introduction here. Nor was this the first time he’s ever worked with a poem by Luisa A. Igloria, though this may be my favorite of their collaborations to date. And their usual working order was reversed, because Luisa’s poem was written in response to a “first draft” of the video, one of the three prompts in the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest. Poetry judge Jessica Piazza selected Luisa’s poem as a runner-up:
Foretold
In that future which pressed
ever closer toward us, time was a roomwhose shape we could no longer determine.
In every city, men stood on platformsgesticulating and making pronouncements.
Armored tanks rolled into the lastencampments, leaving tracks in the river’s
boiled mud. We knew when to flee,what to gather up, what to leave behind.
We walked deeper into blind forests,climbed as high as our feet allowed
up the thinned hair of trees. They let uscocoon there, they let us make hammocks.
At night, we watched as distant flareslimned the unnavigable horizon.
At night, some of us told stories,making shadows with our hands
to mimic the movement of wings.
Marc explained how he put together the video used in the contest:
I had footage of several Psychic TV performances by Allan Chumak. Once, I re-edited a bunch of them for a collab with another poet, but that didn’t happen. The cuts were not wasted and waited on the shelves for another occasion.
I had also footage of an ASMR performance by Epehemeral Rift waiting to be used.
Around the time of the Poetry Storehouse contest proposals, I thought it might be a good idea to put those two pieces of footage together. For the purpose of viewing quality I added an extra layer of light and colour to the Ephemeral Rift recordings. Not really a match, but an interesting pairing.
I created a track and edited the different pieces loosely to the music, hoping it would give some writers an idea.
Luisa told us:
My writing process in response to Marc’s video, which resulted in the poem “Foretold,” was to open two screens on my computer: on the left side, Marc’s video, and on the right, the first page of a new (blank) Word document. I decided that I was going to compose—start immediately to write—as soon as the video started. Almost all of the poem’s lines were generated exactly in this manner, with very slight revisions afterwards (mostly having to do with lineation and spacing, tightening some of my word choices). In Marc’s film, the images—and their strategic juxtaposition—were immediately striking, as was his choice to strip them of sound and instead use music and ambient sound. Though I realized they may not have had anything specifically to do with each other, their pairing in the film’s sequences began to suggest an underlying narrative to me, filled with foreboding and portent. The occurrences of repetition in the film suggested that. The closeups of hands and mouths spoke to me of something both very intimate and very distant, and in some instances those mouths looked as if they could very well be on the verge of varying emotions: rage, for instance; or pleasure, or fear.
Marc added:
Once I got Luisa’s poem, it all came together perfectly. Suddenly these images and their pairing become very political. Nic S. provided a very suitable reading for the track. It all needed a bit of re-editing (in length and pace), but the main visual idea is still the same, but much more powerful because of Luisa’s fantastic poem.
I Was Grass by Amy Miller
Spanish director Eduardo Yagüe’s film for the Poetry Storehouse First Anniversary Contest runner-up poem by Amy Miller. As mentioned in the contest results, poetry judge Jessica Piazza actually selected two of Miller’s poems: one as the first-place winner (see “Backward Like a Ghost“) and the other as one of three runners-up. Here’s that second poem, Miller’s response to Yagüe’s contest footage:
I Was Grass
Under the city, I grew
and sabotaged
the alleys.
What did I have to drink
but cracks of sun
and the sometimes slash
of paint? Or was that
song? I heard it too. Bachata,
an imagined circle step.
You don’t think
grass can dance?
Stop.
The bending
blade and its shadow.
No, watch. Can you see me?
The stem, the glint,
the green.
Yagüe had this to say about the making of the film:
Nic S. suggested I make a video as inspiration for poets writing for The Poetry Storehouse’s first anniversary contest. I am always very honored to collaborate with TPS, so I told Nic that I would be delighted to make the video.
I spent September and October in Stockholm, Sweden. I recorded footage for Marc Neys (Deze zachte witte kamer, poems by Runa Svetlikova). I also directed a videoclip called La viuda, for Spanish singer Pablo Werner, and started several personal projects (such as the Storehouse remix Broken Figure, by Kathleen Kirk). I also took a lot of pictures of the beautiful Swedish capital and its magical light.
Close to Kungsholmen, the district where I live when I go to Stockholm, there is a place that one might find in every big city (it could be New York, Paris or Madrid) and that’s the set I used for the video. A rough stage full of graffiti, concrete and passing trains contrasting with the fragility and tenderness of the great little actress Emma Sjöstrand (10 years old). The general idea was to capture claustrophobic urban images of this place and contrast them with a few shots in a park (Kronobergsparken) with a very different light, air and colors. The only idea I was sure about was the girl snapping her fingers, staring at the camera and disappearing.
I chose for editing some very beautiful music by Kosta T. But my idea was to ask for an original musical score for the final cut from Four Hands Project — the great, imaginative film and TV composers Alberto Ayuso and David Gómez. They composed an exclusive score for what I consider a very special video.
I am quite sure Amy Miller recorded her poem while she was watching the video. When Nic sent me the audio I hardly touched anything, just added a shot or two and revised the rhythm of some images. Amy’s poem was perfect for the images and the music fit incredibly well with both images and words.
I hope you like the final result. I am very happy to have been a collaborator in this amazing project of TPS. Congratulations to Amy Miller and the other winners and participants in this year’s contest, and very special congratulations to Nic S. for her great and generous work of spreading poetry and connecting artists all over the world.
We asked Miller about her writing process. She wrote,
I was moved to write a poem for Eduardo Yagüe’s video—of course—because of that girl. That beautiful, innocent, wily girl. She owns that alley. She is that alley. But she’s something else, too: a spirit of defiance.
The video opens and ends with grass. And I couldn’t help thinking of what that city will look like long after humans are gone, that apocalyptic vision of the vines engulfing the concrete, the wilderness taking over again. And the Carl Sandburg echo is no accident; his grass covered the battlefields, but this girl’s grass uproots the city, grows up—as she does—right through it. She is the blackberry, the kudzu, the bindweed that splits apart the pavement of every civilization and imparts her wildness into it. I think there’s a youthful hope to that, a reminder that every kid has dreams that reach far beyond the walls of where she’s growing up. Every kid is capable of bringing down the old city, of changing the drab old ways—just watch out.
I wanted the girl to ask questions, to get in the reader’s face: “You don’t think grass can dance?” And I wanted her to talk about an actual dance. In the theatre festival where I work, we’re doing a play next year that features Puerto Rican Jíbaro folk music, and it’s been on my mind a lot. I started looking on the internet for a dance that Latina girls in New York might aspire to do, and I found Bachata, which originated in the Dominican Republic. I chose it for the sound of the word and its popularity in clubs. But when I realized I was going to have to record the poem, I had to go back online and listen to recordings of people saying the word because I’d never heard it spoken. (I’m in Southern Oregon; Bachata, along with many other cool things, has not reached us yet.) I had practice the word over and over before recording the poem. Probably still didn’t nail it.
Is Eduardo Yagüe wonderful, or what? Such lyric beauty in this film. What a privilege it was to work with it.
