~ Videopoems ~

Videopoetry, filmpoetry, cinepoetry, poetry-film… the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that text and images enter into dialogue, creating a new, poetic whole.

Hearing Your Voice for the First Time by Raymond Luczak

On 24 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems, Book trailers, Performance Poetry
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Raymond Luczak has made a number of compelling poetry videos in American Sign Language, but this may be my favorite to date. It’s in support of his new book Mute. (See his YouTube channel for a few others.) Luczak writes:

In this clip, I recall what it was like to use my hearing aids when calling a prospective date for the first time. This happened back in the late 1980s, way before the Internet thing came along. The talented songwriter Seth Pennington performs his song “Want” as a guitar instrumental.

(As with the other Luczak videos I’ve posted, I’m putting this in the Spoken Word category even though that’s obviously not a perfect fit.)

Danebury Ring by Tim Cumming

On 22 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Another video from U.K. poet-filmmaker Tim Cumming, this one uploaded to YouTube, whence the following description:

A film poem shot by poet Tim Cumming at Danebury Ring on the Hampshire-Wiltshire-Dorset borders. Danebury Ring is a stunning Iron Age hill fort where sheep graze in the centre of the rings, and the rings are circled by huge old trees. Tim Cumming’s poem, Danebury Ring, appears in the forthcoming anthology of British and Irish poetry, Identity Parade from Bloodaxe Books.

That anthology is now available (scroll down for a well-produced video of the launch reading).

Inscrição (Inscription) by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

On 18 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Director Cine Povero notes:

A poem by Portuguese writer Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004)
Read by Natália Luiza (“Ao Longe os Barcos de Flores”)
Music: “Guidemebytheshiplights, part 2” by Matt Stinton

Filmed at Terra Nostra Park (São Miguel Island, Azores) and Sintra National Park (Portugal).

To sample more of Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen‘s work in English translation, see the Poetry International website.

Our Bodies (A Sinner’s Prayer) by Matt Mullins

On 16 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Brilliant video remix of an Oral Roberts sermon by Matt Mullins. (For the text, see the description at Vimeo.)

fugue: forget you by Martha McCollough

On 15 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Martha McCollough used footage by Kris Rodammer for this contrapuntal videopoem.

Of Shepherds by Ruah Edelstein

On 14 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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Of all the inadvertent omissions from this site, my failure to share any of Ruah Edlestein‘s marvelous Oah & Harlam animations until now may be the most egregious. I love how the animation and the text each tell part of this odd and touching story — something that probably couldn’t have happened quite so seamlessly if the animator and the poet hadn’t been one and the same. Edelstein’s description at Vimeo reads:

This is a first episode from the series of “Oah & Harlam Episodes”.
The project is based on a poetic prose by Ruah Edelstein. At first glance the stories about two
weirdos Oah and Harlam may appear as senseless.
But when there is an overflow of senselessness, then appears deep philosophy.

Original music score by Yoon S. Lee
Sound and final mix by Diego Perez

for more: ruahedelstein.blogspot.com

The Lab Aquaria by Colette Bryce

On 11 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This was the first of the three films Kate Sweeney made in collaboration with poet Colette Bryce for her residency at the Dove Marine Laboratory. (The other two are Ballasting the Ark and Turbines in January.) Sweeney wrote:

‘The Lab Aquaria’ seeks to capture a tone, a feel of the lab; a sort of visual mood or reflection that leaves an after-image of the poem. Colette wished to include one site-specific piece about the Dove laboratory and we visited together to collect imagery in photography and video.

Though there are a couple of direct matches between text and film image, the film as a whole escapes the trap of excessive literalism, and comes across as a lyrical meditation on marine life and the work of science.

[UPDATE] The three films were shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Prize for new works in poetry in 2013.

Clenched Soul by Pablo Neruda

On 10 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is — the credits tell us — a production of the San Diego State University School of Theatre, Televison, and Film. Alexander Ameen, Miles Feld and Kurt Conety jointly directed a disturbing and imaginative interpretation of Neruda’s “Clenched Soul” as translated by W.S. Merwin.

Darkroom by Erica Goss

On 8 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Erica Goss should be familiar to regular readers of Moving Poems for her monthly column about videopoetry, The Third Form, but she is also a very good poet in her own right, as this new collaboration with Swoon (Marc Neys) demonstrates. This was actually a tri-national collaboration, because the cinematography was by Alastair Cook, re-edited by Marc. For the text of the poem, as well as some process notes, see Marc’s blog.

locating faraway objects by Kate Greenstreet

On 7 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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This was made for The Volta: Medium, a weekly video column that often features poetry. Greenstreet also posted the text to her website.

Radio Carbon by Tim Cumming

On 4 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Tim Cumming is a major British poet-filmmaker whose work I’ve just recently learned about. Radio Carbon was especially interesting to me since I’ve been watching a lot of archaeological documentaries in which radiocarbon dating features heavily. Here’s the description from Vimeo:

When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere they create the radioactive isotope carbon 14, which can be detected in living matter and decays at a fixed rate over many millennia. Radiocarbon dating is the method by which we measure prehistoric time, and with which our own detritus will one day be measured.
The filmpoem Radio Carbon takes this transient yet permanent record of time as a personal metaphor, fashioning a hypnotic journey into the human past, from the neolithic to the present moment.
It’s a film with eternity at its centre, the vastness of space at its core, and a reverie of images clustering to the lens like the flashing in a stranger’s eye.

This is in 24 numbered sections, and may be viewed as a sequence of separate, interlocking filmpoems with recurring motifs. Cummings shot the film’s 8mm footage in addition to doing all the editing — a major undertaking for a film of this length. His profile at Salt Publications says that Radio Carbon “was premiered at the Renoir cinema in 2009 and at Port Eliot Festival in 2010.”

I Want To Die While You Love Me by Georgia Douglas Johnson

On 3 January, 2013 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This mash-up by Othniel Smith is so wrong, it’s right: images from Red Detachment of Women accompany a Librivox reading of a classic poem from the Harlem Rennaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson. I hope her heirs have a sense of humor.