~ Video Library ~
more than one by Lo Sirong
A musical videopoem from Taiwan, ‘more than one‘ features the exquisite voice of Lo Sirong singing her own text, in a first collaboration with film-maker Amang Hung, also a poet of some renown.
The subtitles in English are by Steve Bradbury, an American who lived for many years in Taiwan as Associate Professor of English at National Central University. In this week focusing on translation at Moving Poems, this video also embodies another level of poetry translation – into song. About Lo Sirong:
Influenced by her father the poet Lo Lang, Lo Sirong enters her musical world through her poetry; she applies an improvisational style that highlights both her vocal and literary talents to produce intimate meditations on love, family and the human spirit in everyday life.
Lo has produced a large body of work and has written hundreds of songs in Hakka Hokkien and Mandarin Chinese. She has won a number of awards for both her songwriting and poetry from major publications in Taiwan. – World Music Central
Further reading about Lo Sirong also reveals that she embarked on her singing career unusually late in life, not long before turning 50.
Prior to sharing this collaboration between Lo Sirong and Amang Hung, Moving Poems published two musical videopoetry collaborations between Lo Sirong and film-maker Ye Mimi.
춤의 독방 / Chumui dokbang (Solitary Dance Cell) by Lee Hyemi
An adaptation of a poem from Lee Hyemi‘s first collection Ultraviolet by filmmaker Hongrae Lee Kim.
Dave: Lovely dark, claustrophobic ambience. The poet’s voice in the soundtrack is joined by another for a stunning effect, a dialogue that sounds like a monologue.
Marie: I found a second viewing rewarding. That odd and wordless interlude around 01:54 is intriguing, suspending time. I especially like the voices and the placement of them in the aural field, their resonances sometimes bouncing side to side almost in unison. This binaural effect gives emphasis to the text in a way that feels more physical than cognitive, as the sound resonances ping across the brain.
Here are the complete credits from Vimeo:
Performed by HeeJun Lee
Narrated by Hyemi Lee / Luna Bae
Video Catchers : Filmical / PJ soon
Translated by
Helen Hwayeon, Julia Clark and Son HyeJeong,
Sal Kang, Youngseo Lee, Ainee Jeong,
Hoyoung, Shreya Mapadath, Jaewon Che,
Dabin Jeong, Deborah Kim, Victoria Caudle, Anna Toombs
Director of Choreography : HeeJun LeeA film by Hongrae Lee Kim
That’s quite a translation committee! But the Vimeo description ends with this note: “It’s a small gift for Chogwa.” And chogwa is “a quarterly e-zine featuring one Korean poem & multiple English translations.” Here’s issue 7, 12 translations of “Chumui dokbang” by Lee Hyemi. (Note the discussion about how to translate the title. Other possibilities include “Dancing in an Empty Room” and “Dance of Confinement.”)
The overall editor of chogwa, by the way, Soje, translated Lee Hyemi’s second collection, Unexpected Vanilla, which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Prize in Poetry. Here’s a review and here’s a selection. Both Soje and Lee seem like poets to watch.
Θυμήσου, Σώμα… (Remember, Body…) by C. P. Cavafy
Body, remember not only how much you were loved
not only the beds you lay on.
but also those desires glowing openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembling for you in voices—
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too—how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.
translation by George Barbanis
Dancer/choreographer Konstantina Ntinapogia directs this collaborative “embodiment” of a poem by the great 20th-century Greek poet Cavafy. Since the English translation is not included in subtitles, only in the Vimeo description, viewers without Greek may, if they choose, rely on the choreography alone for meaning. And we’ve always been interested in dance as a medium for poetry here. Like poetry film itself, dance can be seen as a form of translation. Similarly, this could be seen as a music video, since the commission included an original composition based on the poem by artist(s) of the director’s choice. The band Ntinapogia chose to work with is called Lost Bodies. She notes:
As part of the 30 Days of Poetry project coordinated by choreographer Olga Spyraki, I was invited to dance and choreograph in collaboration with a musician of my choice. Our instructions were for the music to be original and made on a poem that we would bring together with the composer. This particular poem is by the famous Greek poet Konstantine P. Cavafy entitled “Thimisou, Soma…” that means “Remember, Body…” and my screen-dance is 1:37 minutes [long]. […]
How could this poem be embodied? How does body memory wake up? What is the color of passion? were some of my most basic questions. In this particular video-dance I worked not only as a dancer and choreographer but also as a director / cinematographer since I also dealt with the perspectives of the space, the use of the camera and I also did the editing. I am incredibly pleased with the process of research and composition.
Music: Lost Bodies
Song: “Thimisou, Soma…”
Dancer/Performer: Konstantina Ntinapogia
Camera: Marilena Dionysopoulou
Montaj: Konstantina Ntinapogia, Ioannis Makropoulos
Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Amanda Palmer reads Edna St. Vincent Millay in this animation by the award-winning children’s book author and artist Sophie Blackall, with music by Tom McRae. It’s last month’s installment for the wonderful Universe in Verse series, which we’ve been kind of sleeping on here. Maria Popova notes in her introduction to the series on her website that
The Universe in Verse was born in 2017 as a charitable celebration of the wonder of reality through stories of science winged with poetry — part resistance (to the assault on science and the natural world in an atmosphere of “alternative facts” and vanishing ecological protections) and part persistence (in sustaining the felicitous expression of nature in human nature, with our capacity for music and mathematics, for art and hope.)
For four seasons (below, in reverse chronology), it remained a live gathering — thousands of embodied universes of thought and feeling, huddled together in a finite space built in a faraway time when Whitman’s living atoms walked the streets outside.
In this interlude between gatherings, as we face the biological and ecological realities of life with widened eyes, I have entwined visions with my friends at On Being to reimagine the spirit of The Universe in Verse in a different incarnation, a year in the making: a season of stories about epoch-making events, discoveries, and unsung heroes from the history of science — this common record of our search for truth and the native beauty of reality — each illustrated in poetry’s lovely abstract language, with an animated poem.
Be sure to read the rest and check out all the films. We’ll share more of them here as time permits. I also strongly recommend Popova’s essay introducing “Dirge Without Music,” which for its “unsung hero” presents an engaging account of mathematician Emmy Noether (1882–1935). A stanza from Millay’s poem was read at her funeral.
Noho Mai by Peta-Maria Tunui
Winner of the 2020 Ó Bhéal Poetry-Film Competition, Noho Mai is a simple, slow and gentle piece, balm in troubled times. It is spoken in the Māori language (te reo), with English subtitles to be found in the closed captions (bottom right of the Vimeo player).
The project was initiated and facilitated by Charles Olsen and Lilián Pallares. Charles is a New Zealander now living in Spain. Conceived at the start of the pandemic, it became an online collaboration between artists in the two countries. The poem was written by Peta-Maria Tunui as part of an exploratory workshop process that also involved contributions from Waitahi Aniwaniwa McGee, Shania Bailey-Edmonds and Jesse-Ana Harris.
Charles has written at length about the film here.
waxing gibbous 97% illuminated by Yolanda Movsessian
This film by Mitchell Collins, with poetry and recitation by Houston-based poet Yolanda Movsessian, won the Judge’s Prize at REELpoetry Houston 2022.
Utility Pole by Fiona Tinwei Lam and Mary McDonald
A very effective collaboration between two Canadian poetry filmmakers, Mary McDonald and Vancouver poetry laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam. Here’s the description from Vimeo:
Utility Pole is a poetry film collaboration between poet Fiona Tinwei Lam and poetry filmmaker Mary McDonald. Utility Pole explores the transformation of trees into the poles that hold our communications, the many branched network that connect us, as the trees have been severed from each other and their own living networks.
The soundscape is a binaural, 360 soundscape featuring a mix of urban forest sounds, with the sounds of technology today and the pointed call of Morse code, our earliest technologically enabled transatlantic communication. Morse code recording is from Freesound.org credits, Bryce835.
This was featured at the indispensable Poetry Film Live site. Go there to read the poet-filmmakers’ bios. As they note, the text of the poem appears in Tinwei Lam’s third collection, Odes & Laments.
