~ 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.

I Accelerate by Musa Okwonga

On 24 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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According to a bio at The Independent,

Musa Okwonga is a football writer, poet and musician of Ugandan descent. In 2008 his first football book, A Cultured Left Foot, was nominated for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. He is one half of The King’s Will, an electronica outfit that blends poetry, music, and animated videos.

Various “poetry in motion” projects on buses, trains and subways have been a staple of public poetry campaigns in cities around the world since at least the 1980s. Smile for London is taking this a step further by bringing poetry animation to the tube. The above animation by Amy Thornley and Louise Lawlor (Collective of two) is one example of what Underground riders will see, though I gather it will be shown without audio accompaniment. Let me paste in the text from the Smile for London website:

Our Mission is to bring the talent, creativity and culture of London to the digital screens on the Underground.

We LOVE London. That’s why we’re turning the cross track projection screens on the London Underground into a digital playground by exhibiting moving image by the best emerging and established artists around. Our mission is to unleash these creative minds to explore the medium of silent digital film with the aim of engaging, uplifting and inspiring commuters.

Following the great support and feedback from our pilot exhibition in 2011, we’re back to proudly present Word in Motion, our upcoming exhibition that blends the world of literature with the world of art.

A number of this year’s animations have been popping up on Vimeo. I’ll share some more of them here in the weeks to come.

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

On 23 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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http://vimeo.com/35205909

Video and reading by Nic S. for her site Pizzicati of Hosanna. Though sometimes I don’t quite share Nic’s enthusiasm for outer-space imagery, I thought it really worked here.

Vowels by Temujin Doran

On 20 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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A fascinating found-poem(ish) work in which a close match of image to word, rather than ruining the film altogether as would usually be the case with videopoetry, is instead the secret to its success:

This short film is based on an archival sound recording taken from the 1945 Linguaphone series ‘English Pronunciation – A practical handbook for the foreign learner.’

Thus the description at Vimeo.

Just to clarify: the artist himself — London-based illustrator and filmmaker Temujin Doran — does not claim that this is a videopoem or film-poem; that’s purely my contention. The fact that the words in the found text are arranged for maximum assonance has of course a lot to do with this impression. And on second viewing, one sees that at least a quarter of the word-image matches aren’t obvious at all, and that it is this element of regular surprise that makes it a videopoem. Tom Konyves‘ general observation on the importance of juxtaposition remains intact, I think.

dollhouse by Shabnam Piryaei

On 17 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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It’s not often you see such roles as Key Grip, Script Supervisor and Gaffer in the credits of a poetry film! Even better, it still goes in the author-made videopoem category, as Iranian-American poet Shabnam Piryaei is credited as both writer and main director. According to the bio on her website, her print publication credits are as impressive as her film credits. It’s always heartening to see a poet working in film at such a high level of professional expertise.

Ochtend (Dawning) by Yahia Lababidi

On 16 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Swoon re-edited a video he originally posted eight months ago, making it shorter, more visually appealing and I think more effective in the process. I’m not sure why I didn’t share the original, but I love this videopoem now. The poem was written in English by the Egyptian poet Yahia Lababidi, and has been translated into Dutch by Katelijne De Vuyst for the soundrack. Swoon and his wife Arlekeno Anselmo, who reads the translation, are Belgian. This is perhaps an extreme example of a widespread tendency I’ve noticed in the online videopoetry community to ignore national boundaries and strive to overcome linguistic ones, as well — facilitated, I would argue, by the change in focus from written text to audio and visual media. We are no longer quite so locked into our separate linguistic and cultural rooms.

Profile by R.W. Perkins

On 13 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 1 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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“Profile is a stream of consciousness combination of poetry and prose. The visuals of the film were intended to represent the chaos of thought.” This would be a mesmerizing piece even without R.W. Perkins’ very interesting and detailed process notes on Vimeo and at his website (q.v.). Last Friday at VidPoFilm, Brenda Clews captured the essence of the excitement that many of us in the online videopoetry community feel about this film:

R.W. Perkins has it all in this video. When I saw it I felt it was a marker of our era. That surely many films of this type will follow, but his was the first. Identity in the twenty-first century is shaped by social media sites. Your life is not contained in your private diaries and photo albums anymore; it’s all on-line now. The notion of who we are has never been more global or more revealing.

One’s Facebook profile updates and photo albums provide many snapshots of a life. R.W. Perkins has captured that sense of a collided life, a life of snapshots and home videos and snatches of writing. It is a fast-paced life. We describe ourselves to each other. There are millions of us. Facebook is approaching 1/7th of the world’s population. It is a social media site that is creating a twenty-first sense of self.

Put it all together and you get, PROFILE. On his website, R.W. Perkins offers his essay on his videopoem, Profiles, as his Profile.

Read the rest (and if you have any interest in the videopoem/filmpoem genre, don’t miss a post at VidPoFilm).

It Wasn’t the Flu by Ren Powell

On 12 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation, Author-made videopoems
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Norway-based American poet Ren Powell writes,

I saw a website called fiverr. People will do/make things for 5 bucks. Nathan is making play doh stop motion animations with his kids: 15 seconds for 5.

The result is something of an exquisite corpse… with kids.

It Wasn’t the Flu (From Mercy Island. Phoenicia Publishing, 2011).

I find the result really delightful and satisfying — more so than many more sophisticated poetry animations I’ve seen.

Seepferdchen und Flugfische (Seahorses and Flying Fish) by Hugo Ball

On 11 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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And now for something completely different: Bob Marsh chants the 1916 Dada sound poem by Hugo Ball in a marvellous video interpretation by drummer and videographer Grant Strombeck.

The Genius of the Crowd by Charles Bukowski

On 10 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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Another Bukowski videopoem by the graphic design company immprint. This one includes the poet’s own reading, and “the soundtrack is by immprint with most of the footage shot in New York.”

I’m not sure about the repurposing of this poem for an environmental message, but I do like the device of counting up the total human population as the film rolls, and the soundtrack is damn near perfect.

Um fiapo de homem (An excuse for a man) by Nereu Afonso

On 9 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Videopoems
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This is FIAPO, a short poetry film available in multiple languages and with its own Facebook page. The poet, Nereu Afonso, is credited with the screenplay and also stars in the film. Alexandre Braga directs. The description at Vimeo and Facebook reads,

Um homem só, palavras de um homem só…
O que dizer? Como dizer e para quem dizer quando o silêncio à sua volta lhe parece portador de mais sentido?
O que é mais lúcido? O que é mais absurdo? Falar ou calar?
Esta é a terceira experiência criativa de Alexandre Braga e Nereu Afonso. Talvez não trará respostas. Contentar-se-á em lançar perguntas. Perguntas presas num último fiapo… no qual poderíamos nos agarrar.

Google Translate renders this as follows:

A man, a man only words …
What to say? How to say and who to tell when the silence around him seems to carry more meaning?
What is more lucid? What is more absurd? Speak or be silent?
This is the third creative experience of Alexandre Afonso Braga and Nereus. It may not bring answers. Content will be to launch questions. Questions lint trapped in the last … in which we cling.

(Hat-tip: the Video and Film Poetry group on Vimeo)

Just As, After a Point, Job Cried Out by K.A. Hays

On 6 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Animation
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Motionpoems are releasing their 2012 crop of animations one a month; this is the first — an animation by Emma Burghardt of a poem by K.A. Hays. Please see the post at the Motionpoems website for the text of the poem and its full publication history.

By the way, if you like what Motionpoems are doing to bring great American poems to the big and small screen (including, hopefully, cable TV), please consider donating to their current fundraising campaign. Unfortunately, they were locked out of a major state arts grant this year due to a little-publicized change in the application process, so their need for donations is especially acute right now.

Isn’t It Time We… by John Siddique

On 5 January, 2012 by Dave Bonta with 0 Comments - Author-made videopoems
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http://vimeo.com/23682194

This is “Hawthorne Moon,” the one installment in John Siddique‘s Thirteen Moons video series which isn’t an animation. It was shot and directed by the poet himself with final editing by Walter Santucci.