~ Author-made videopoems ~
RED by Salena Godden
Anything you can do we can do bleeding
We can do anything dripping with blood
Salena Godden released this poem and video back in September in collaboration with Nasty Women UK, a London art show that raised money to combat violence against women and girls, according to a blog post.
Salena Godden, one of the UK’s most iconic poets, has stepped forward to donate her latest poem RED in a collaboration with Nasty Women UK.
“RED is a poem about periods. RED is about stigma. This is about women’s autonomy over their own bodies and their own choices. RED is a protest poem against the tampon tax, anger that sanitary products have been considered a luxury item and therefore taxable. RED is a fury that money from the UK tampon tax is funding anti-abortion charities. I have great admiration for the work of the Nasty Women’s global movement and donate this work as an endorsement. We must end all violence against all women in all its forms. We must end the tampon tax. I wish all women to have a bloody safe and bloody healthy period. Period!”
Nasty Women is a global art movement that serves to demonstrate solidarity among artists who identify with being a Nasty Woman in the face of threats to roll back women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights. With over 40 events across the globe Nasty Women Exhibitions also serve to support organizations defending these rights and to be a platform for organization and resistance.
Click through for the text of the poem.
The video was screened as part of Godden’s headlining performance at this past weekend’s Filmpoem Festival in Lewes.
Blue by Erica Goss
The latest author-made film from Erica Goss, who included these process notes in the description:
During the summer of 2017, my brother visited me from New York City. He wanted to get a tattoo, so we found High Priestess in Eugene, where I had just moved. I asked my brother and the tattoo artist if I could film the procedure, and they agreed. I had a poem, titled “Blue,” that I wrote in 2014 after listening to the Joni Mitchell song of the same name. The poem mentions tattoos, so I thought it would be a good fit with the subject of the video. A technical note: I did no color correction on the video except for the last scene, where I increased the light and contrast slightly. The room was fairly dark, so the spotlights show up as a bit blown out. I like the effect and didn’t want to change it.
The music is by Kevin MacLeod.
Repeated by Dani Salvadori
I’m not sure why all the disparate elements of this haiku videopoem should hold together so well, but they do. Text, video and sound design are all the work of Dani Salvadori, who notes on Vimeo that the “Footage [was] shot during 2016 and combined to commemorate too many business trips.” The music is by Troy Holder.
I like Salvadori’s about page:
Video poetry, for the smallest screen. Made by mobile for mobile viewing.
Check out her other videos.
12 Sights of the Sea by Ian Gibbins
A new version of a videopoem by Ian Gibbins, transferring the majority of the text, which had been entirely on-screen on an earlier version, into a voice-over. I find this approach much more effective, though the earlier version is undoubtedly more accessible to the deaf (and possibly also to the dyslexic). Here’s the Vimeo description:
… the rippling enfoldment, across the ebb, failure below deck, only By-the-Wind-Sailors … text originally published in Cordite 45: Silence (2014)… images and sounds recorded from the seas and islands around the Fleurieu Peninsula, South Australia.
Be sure to follow Ian’s blog to keep up with all his video- and music-making. He claims to be retired, but the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
13 Ways of Looking at a Haiku + anagram mix by Jim Kacian
Jim Kacian riffs on the famous Wallace Stevens poem, but in visual terms, featuring variants on an original theme. Filmed on Moosehead Lake, Maine, in 2016 and presented here during HaikuLife 2017, part of International Haiku Poetry Day, an initiative of The Haiku Foundation, held 17 April 2017.
That’s from the Haiku Foundation’s HaikuLife 2017 page, which also presents a companion video:
While creating 13 Ways of Looking at a Haiku for HaikuLife 2017, Jim Kacian became addicted to the anagrammatic possibilities of his “seed poem”. Here are 13 of what he feels are the best variations (he warns that many others are possible).
Jim Kacian is one of the most prominent practitioners and publishers in the modern (gendai) English-language haiku scene. It’s great to see him taking such an innovative approach to haiku videopoetry here. Most haiku videos on YouTube and Vimeo are intensely conservative and boring, in my opinion, featuring little of the creative disjunction for which modern haiku is known.
My Body Is Mine by Jade Anouka
A simple but powerful videopoetic statement from British poet and actor Jade Anouka. Jade noted in an email that the poem was something she initially wrote for Black History Month.
Ao Amigo do Fáscio / To the Fascist’s Friend by Murilo Guimarães
Murilo Guimarães is a Brazilian poet and multimedia artist and a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Lisbon. Ao Amigo do Fáscio is his first release for RG: Murilo, “an art project situated in an imaginary intersection of ethnography, electronic music, video and literature.”
The poem is a letter to [one who] has been captivated by violently irrational acts and thoughts set by politicians, intellectuals and influencing individuals or groups.
In the video, two proto-fascists walk around the city amidst everyone else without being noticed.
The voiceover is by Terêncio Lins. Be sure to click the CC icon to read the English translation (which is a little rough, but one can get the drift).
Cathedral by Dave Richardson
My brother lost his virginity behind the barn, he says, but he says a lot of things… sometimes we want to hold on to sanctuaries and cathedrals even as they crumble.
A new, text-on-screen videopoem by artist and writer Dave Richardson, each of whose poetry films so far has been something of a masterpiece. This one has special resonance for me, since I also grew up playing in an old barn with my brothers, and love old barns in general. Cathedral strikes me as a quiet but powerful ode to this most iconic embodiment of rural life.
West of Dalabrog by Susannah Ramsay
Poet and director Susannah Ramsay‘s description reads:
West of Dalabrog refers to the relationship between place, landscape, memory and subjective experience. It focuses on the return to a place of personal importance – a long stretch of white sand to the west of the town of Dalabrog, South Uist, which I first visited in 2001. The return represents a shift in perception and reflects how time can bear great change on a place, landscape and more crucially memory.
Fucking Him by C.O. Moed and Adrian Garcia Gomez
“Love and fucking may sometimes be the same. But not when it counts,” reads the synopsis for this 2015 poetry film directed jointly by Claire Olivia (C.O.) Moed and Adrian Garcia Gomez.
Last year, Fucking Him won Best Experimental Film at the Manhattan Independent Film Festival and Curator’s Choice for Best Sound/Music at Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival, was the Grand Prix Winner for Found Footage at the 2015 Interference Festival in Gdansk, and has been screened in a number of other festivals as well.
Colour Poems by Margaret Tait
A classic poetry film by the Scottish filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait (1918-1999). It’s one of “Five Filmpoems: Curated by Susannah Ramsay” in the first issue of an online journal dedicated to “exploring and showcasing the milieux, methods and madnesses of contemporary poetry in all its emergent myriad forms,” All These New Relations. Ramsay has this to say about Colour Poems:
Margaret Tait was known as a filmpoet and experimental filmmaker. Her approach to filmmaking was remarkably similar to the ethos of the avant-garde, generally self-funded, non-conformist, uncompromising, non-commercial, with distribution and exhibition being select. I think Colour Poems (1974) depicts some of the more thought provoking images within her oeuvre. There is a wonderful poetical moment, which begins with the poppy fields where Tait questions the true essence of the image through juxtaposing shots of the Scottish oil industry and related capitalist iconography and a sequence of images relating to a return to the earth. Nature is brought into being through spoken word. The narrator willing the viewer to look beyond what can be seen, to ‘look into all that is illuminated by the light’ […] ‘the own person’s own self perceiving the light and making the music’ suggesting that we are the beholders of (our) true vision.
What would you do? by PXVCE
A new video by YouTuber PXVCE, who writes in the description,
In this short piece i ask questions about the future of humanity, pointing out systematic oppression in today’s society! Encouraging listeners to wake up and reverse the cycle!
As noted in the video title, this was shot with the help of a small drone as well as a smartphone cinematography extension that sounds pretty amazing.
PXVCE describes himself as a “Cleveland born producer and artist” who “has a goal to create poetry for the culture.”
Subliminal messages embedded in his pieces often evoke medication and a state of chill. Implementing positive vibes and witty word play PXVCE offers a nostalgic style reminiscent of the Harlem Renaissance Era. While the soul takes its aural banquet from the universal language, the conscious is awakened. A Third eye is no longer dormant in the listener’s senses creating change one piece at a time ushering in new thought.
Artist as change agent is nothing new. However, it’s the way that this artist manages to use his music artistry to motivate, initiate, and spark creativity in listeners so that unity and love find a place in their lives that makes him a top-of-mind poet for this generation.
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