~ 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.

Becoming Judas: five poems by Nicelle Davis

On 16 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Animation, Book trailers
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These poems are from Becoming Judas by Nicelle Davis, forthcoming from Red Hen Press. The wonderfully whimsical drawings by Cheryl Gross are animated in a fairly basic style which the description at YouTube dubs “motion graphics.”

Epithalamium by Timothy David Orme

On 15 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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An interesting experimental piece by filmmaker and poet Timothy David Orme, who describes it at Vimeo as follows:

Epithalamium is a hybrid work of “poetry” and altered, erased, and intentionally damaged 16mm film–an odd marriage poem to an ex-wife, the first part being a poem for the speaker’s marriage day, the second part being a poem to the divorced wife’s future marriage, a sort of ‘future memory.’

Epithalamium is a silent project.

For more examples of Orme’s filmmaking, see his online portfolio.

The Itch by Mark Gwynne Jones

On 14 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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http://vimeo.com/37387784

According to the description on Vimeo, these are

Words and pictures from the English Peak District, courtesy of Mark Gwynne Jones and Andy Lawrence… 2012

This film was made in one day, using the Canon 220 sx powershot HS, a cheap compact camera, and iMovie..

Lawrence and Jones are part of a band/multimedia partnership called Psychicbread which has produced a whole series of filmpoems with texts by Jones. According to the Horizon Review,

Four times fringe-award winners, Mark Gwynne Jones and the Psychicbread use poetry, music and humour as their messenger. From the girl who spent too long on a sunbed to the joys of driving a Sherman Tank at rush hour. . . the result is contagious, gritty and sometimes startlingly sensitive.

Daughter and two other poems by Emily Hinshelwood

On 13 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems, Performance Poetry
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http://vimeo.com/38151568

“This is an animation of my poem Daughter which I wrote after visiting the Old Point pub near Angle in Pembrokeshire,” writes Welsh poet and playwright Emily Hinshelwood in the description at Vimeo.

As a bonus, here’s Hinshelwood reading two poems for poetryvlog.com, “Lady Cave Anticline” and “And whan all else fails.” The audio quality isn’t great, but her readings make up for it. As a bit of a geology geek, I especially like the first.

Voices from Haiti: Boy in Blue by Kwame Dawes

On 12 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 2 Comments - Kinestasis
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This is the English version of the “visual poem” Boy in Blue with poetry by Kwame Dawes, images by photographer Andre Lambertson, editing by Robin Bell and music by Kevin Simmonds. See YouTube for the text.

I’ve decided to change course here and begin occasionally posting films that consist entirely of still images so I can feature projects like this. The technical term for a film montage of still images (often found in documentary films) is kinestasis, so that’s the name of this newest category at Moving Poems.

I previously shared Dawes’ kinestases with photographer Joshua Cogan, Live Hope Love, which was about living with HIV in Jamaica. Voices from Haiti is a newer series, also produced by the Pulitzer Center, which explores life after the earthquake in Haiti, focusing on the lives of those affected by HIV/AIDS.

At the AWP conference in Chicago the week before last, I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Dawes speak about the collaborative process involved in making these videos, and was impressed by the extent to which he and the other artists involved in these projects seem to have stumbled upon some of the same principles that make regular videopoems or filmpoems work: the importance of the soundtrack and the need for juxtaposition rather than simple illustration to created multiple narratives in the listener’s head — “reportages in dialogue,” as he put it. These visual poems are creations in their own right, different from purely textual poems, and would not have happened without collaboration between poet, photographer and composer, he said.

Words (poems by Polish immigrants in the UK)

On 8 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Videopoems
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A beautiful film written and directed by Maciej Piatek with photography by Karol Wyszynski. The poems are “Kupiliśmy cegiełki” and “Translator” by Honorata Chorąży-Przybysz, “Wulgarni” by Jacek Raputa and “I’m telling you, Mate…” by Paweł Lysak, all of which may be found (in Polish) on the webpage “Poezja polskich emigrantów” at the Kobieta na Wyspach (Woman on Island) internet portal for Poles living in the U.K.

War Rug by Francesco Levato

On 8 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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Francesco Levato is one of the most ambitious filmmakers in the American cinepoetry tradition. Here’s his description of War Rug at Vimeo:

The film is based on a work of documentary poetics in the form of a book length poem. Multiple interwoven narratives explore life within zones of conflict as viewed through the lens of current warfare. The narratives range from passages inspired by journal entries, firsthand accounts, and news reports to poetic constructs collaged from military doctrine, Freedom of Information Act released government documents (like CIA interrogation manuals, and detainee autopsy reports), and numerous other sources. The film collages and juxtaposes archival source material with U.S. Military footage in an exploration of alternative narrative interpretations of the source text.

A Game of Sevens by Robert Peake

On 7 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A film-poem by Robert Peake and Valerie Kampmeier — their fourth. For the text, see Robert’s blog.

Motionpoems at the AWP book fair

On 6 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, conferences, interviews

A brief interview with Todd Boss, poet and co-founder of Motionpoems — the most ambitious poetry animation project in the U.S. to date, on a par with Comma Press’ film division in the U.K.

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Oedipus by Nathan Filer

On 6 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This light-verse film, starring the poet and directed by U.K. filmmaker RONG, won the Best Poetry Film prize at the 3rd ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival in 2006.

To Learn From Each Thing by John Siddique

On 4 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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http://vimeo.com/28658512

This is “Vine Moon” from John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons series, directed and supervised by Walter Santucci. For this one, Raul Torres and Britt Wallstrom are credited with the animation and concept.

Better Days by Kevin Cadwallender

On 2 March, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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I’ve been reading interviews collected around the U.S. during the Great Depression by the Federal Writer’s Project, and this poem perfectly captures my reaction to that heritage of hard times and lives cut short by poverty and dangerous work. This is Alastair Cook‘s 19th filmpoem, with a sound composition by Mark Walters.