~ 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.
A Day at the Mall Reminds Me of America by Sarah Blake
Motionpoems has just kicked off its 6th season with this tour de force from the Turkish-American filmmaker Ayse Altinok. The cinematography is by Greg Schmidt and the music by William Orbit.
Sarah Blake‘s poem appears in her debut collection Mr. West, an “unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West” which Evie Shockley calls “tender without being sentimental, funny without being cruel, and obsessive without being exploitative.” Check out Arisa White‘s interviews with Blake and Altinok at the Motionpoems website. Blake says, in part:
I love the film. I felt like [Ayşe] made me a version of Kanye West’s music video for his song, ‘Flashing Lights’—a version of it just for me and my poem.
And Altinok notes that she deliberately chose a shorter poem with lots of room for cinematic exploration:
“Less words, more story” is very interesting to me in any discipline. I didn’t want to explain the poem, I wanted to duet the words and the meanings explored in the text. When I read the poem, I immediately saw the 14-year-old girl and her world. It wasn’t a struggle to bring her to life. It was a very relevant subject to me. I love youth culture and also visual poetry; this was a heavenly project. […]
After I read the poem I immediately started writing a script. It was more of a shot-list at first. I didn’t bother writing the happenings in a poetic way, I thought the poetry was already written by Sarah Blake, so I only put ideas on paper in a very practical manner. It was literally a list of scenes. I definitely knew my character needed to be the 14-year-old, rather than the woman who is the pregnant narrator. She didn’t seem too interesting to me, like myself—I can never make a film about me, but I want to make films about things I like. Rather, things I find fruitful (story-wise). I also thought my writing sucked, so at that point, I turned to photography. I started looking at pictures, mostly portraits, and created this character, and give her an identity. I felt very free—that was the best part of working with a poem.
In terms of script, though, I had to structure it in a way that felt compelling, and with a sense of beginning, middle, and end. It was a fragile story, I didn’t want to make a big statement, but I didn’t want to create just fluff, with a bunch of beautiful images and no thread, either—it was a gentle balance, not too much story that kills the poem, but not too freestyle that loses its meaning. I wanted people to feel what it’s like to live this character’s life, rather then me telling them how to.
Bees by Beverley Nadin
Kate Sweeney directed this film for Beverley Nadin’s Commended poem in the 2014 National Poetry Competition.
From the judges: ”This poem of historical abuse works powerfully because it’s written with a tremulous watchful grace. The adult perspective recalling the child perspective is very finely done, as the bifurcated character remembers the day that clove her in two. Its rhymes are halting, haunting, they come and go as if desperate both to remember and forget.” – Glyn Maxwell.
The Poetry Society’s annual National Poetry Competition is for previously unpublished single poems.
Filmpoems have been commissioned in partnership with Alastair Cook and Filmpoem for all eleven winning poems, and will tour at festivals around the country and beyond.
Considering Luminescence / Consideraciones Sobre la Luz by Laura M Kaminski
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Spanish filmmaker Eduardo Yagüe has once again taken the difficult route and produced two entirely different films for the English and Spanish versions of a text. The author is U.S. poet Laura M Kaminski. For Considering Luminescence, Yagüe used the voice recording by Maureen Alsop at The Poetry Storehouse and music by Fourhands Project, and worked with the actress Gabrielle Roy. Consideraciones Sobre la Luz features Yagüe’s own translation and voice, music by Martin Rach, and the actor Faustino Fernández. Both films were shot this May, the first in Madrid and the second in Gijón.
Green Enchantment (Verde Embeleso) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
I made this video for a new series I’ve started at the literary blog Via Negativa, “Poetry from the Other Americas.” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is one of the greatest poets of the last 500 years, and it bothered me that I didn’t have anything of hers at Moving Poems yet. Luck was on my side, because (as is often the case with me) I shot the meadow footage without knowing how I’d use it. Then a few days later I found the translation in my files and the proverbial light bulb went off. Since this is a “green” poem, I suppose we should imagine an LED light. But as I said in my process notes at Via Negativa, verde or green has all kinds of connotations, including some that Sor Juana couldn’t have imagined in 1688, and I think it’s fine to suggest some of them in a contemporary videopoem. Through the choice of fonts and music, I tried to bridge the gap between the 17th and 21st centuries.
I also did something a little out of the norm for films/videos of poems in translation: I put the original language into subtitles and a reading of the translation in the soundtrack. To me, this approach makes sense if the primary audience is people who need the translation to understand the poem. Though I personally find reading subtitled movies very easy, I’m told that a lot of people have trouble with it, and in any case, most traditional poetry makes its strongest appeal to the ear, not to the eye. On the other hand, people in the target audience with hearing disabilities will not be well served by this approach.
The black-and-white footage is sourced from two television ads produced in the 1960s, found via the invaluable Prelinger Archives. The music is also in the public domain, courtesy of MusOpen. Thanks to Luisa A. Igloria for the terrific reading.
Part 5 by Claire Williams
Claire Williams is both poet and performer here—but this is not a performance-poetry video, as you’ll see. Cinematography, design and editing are by Etta Jaffe, with production assistance by Grace Williams.
Apology of Genius by Mina Loy
A blog post about modernists by Ira Lightman, current digital poet-in-residence at the Poetry School, made me realize I’d never posted anything by Mina Loy at Moving Poems. Searching Vimeo, I found this film by the Finnish videopoet J.P. Sipilä.
This film poem is based on a poem ‘Apology of Genius’ by Mina Loy. I have always read this poem as a poem against futurism, even Loy was herself considered as a futurist. It stand agains the rough and hard world where thoughts and time are replaced by power and speed. And this is something I have underlined on this film. This film poem is about inequality, about something that prevents us from understanding each other. It’s an apology of understanding.
The music is credited to Samuli Sailo, with additional sounds from freesound.org. Though the film uses a little less than half of Loy’s text, it strikes me as very true to her spirit. (Read the complete poem at allpoetry.com.)
I wonder what Loy would’ve thought of videopoetry? I’ve always loved her definition of poetry:
Poetry is prose bewitched, a music made of visual thoughts, the sound of an idea.
The Art of Poetry Film with Cheryl Gross: “The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter”
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter
Poem by Mark Strand
Film by Scott Wenner
Voice by Don Drive
Recording by Kelly Pieklo
Motionpoems 2013
I love animated videopoems. This appreciation developed while I was growing up watching cartoons with my favorite baby sitter, the television set. Although most animated videopoems cannot be compared to Heckle and Jeckle or Bugs Bunny, they still bring back memories of my formative years, eating Wonder Bread and butter sandwiches. The shows that I watched were filled with sarcasm and also had a dark side. When I look back, one could say that they were for the most part inappropriate and violent. That’s the down side. The up side is that they helped shape my sick sense of humor. Perhaps watching cartoons prepared me for adulthood. It’s sad to think of Tweety Bird as a role model.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter is exactly what I’m talking about in terms of it having a hint of darkness. The design is well done, the timing is perfect and the art is beautifully animated. The first scene involving the graffiti subway is a nice touch. I won’t bother to compare it to When At A Certain Party In NYC. Both are on the same level in terms of excellence. Both are wonderfully executed and although seemingly simple, they’re amazingly complex. Again the animation is flawless and I am still trying to figure out which program Scott Wenner used. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some kind of 3D aspect in After Effects, but that’s a technical question we animators like to ponder.
The poetry is wonderful. The ending is a bit of a surprise, but not really. So many times we expect more from a situation and are left hanging. Although the character is plain in appearance he remains expressive and possesses an amazing amount of emotion. This coupled with the poetry makes this videopoem outstanding.
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter tells a story that leaves you dangling. We are experiencing a small yet unsettling trip through limbo, which is perhaps closer to reality than we would like to be. It’s sort of like reading a book and having the last page torn out. I could bring this review full circle and continue to talk about how my childhood was shaped by Walt Disney and Looney Tunes, but hopefully by this point my taste in animation has become a bit more sophisticated.
Jeg sætter mig / I take a seat by Morten Søndergaard
Danish poet Morten Søndergaard‘s reading of his poem for Lyrikline, as well as the English translation there by John Irons, are featured in this videopoem by Marc Neys A.K.A. Swoon, who writes:
A big thanks to Arjen Vandrie for being the recording engineer of the different instruments I mistreated in this track.
The visual idea for the video came to me when going through different sources looking for footage for another project.
I picked out pieces depicting several (powerful) forces in nature (water/waves, wind, lightning,…) and some with a clear human presence in it. One piece (The hand above the water) was the perfect carrier for the words. The repetition of that calming gesture worked perfectly with Morten’s voice.[…]
poem & voice: Morten Søndergaard
(from: Bier dør sovende – Copenhagen: Borgens Forlag, 1998)
Audioproduktion: Literaturwerkstatt Berlin 2008
Concept, editing, treats & music: SWOON
recording engineer music: Arjen Vandrie
Cinematography: cinematography: Sarah Lee (from ‘Under The Sea’)
Leonard Soosay (from ‘For Benny’) – Michael Raiden (from ‘ A Quick Hour’)
under the Attribution license (CC BY 3.0)
Thanks; Orange HD, videoblocks, Mazwai, Lyrikline
Surprisingly, I’ve never shared a Danish poetry film here before—this is the first. I hope it won’t be the last. (I’d love to see a filmmaker do something with Henrik Nordbrandt’s poetry, for example.)
Lexiconography 1 by Heid E. Erdrich and Margaret Noodin
A fascinating experiment in translation. R. Vincent Moniz, Jr. is the producer and co-director with Jonathan Thunder (art direction and animation). Poet Heid E. Erdrich collaborated with translator Margaret Noodin of Ojibwe.net, as the YouTube description makes clear:
This short poem film, created by R. Vincent Moniz, Jr. and Jonathan Thunder, experiments with animation and sound in a bi-lingual tribute to the nearly extinct wooden clothespin. Created with English words from a bi-lingual dictionary entry for the word “cloud” the poem is brought to action in both English and Anishinaabemowin.
“Lexiconography 1″ is one of a series of poems Heid E. Erdrich has collaborated on with Margaret Noodin. Heid’s original text in English (written with an awareness of Ojibwe language) is translated into Anishinaabemowin and then back into English to reveal tensions between the language as Noodin sees them. The animated poem is not a strict translation of the English. “Lexiconography 1” is available as a FREE downloadable work of art by Meghan Keane at www.broadsidedpress.org
I’ve long maintained that videopoetry is a great medium for communicating the power of poetry across language barriers, and I think this is a good example of that.
Corkscrew Hill Photo by Roger Philip Dennis
A poetry-film about a photographer strikes me as a particularly difficult assignment, but director James William Norton of Filmpoem rose to the challenge, enlisting the aid of actress Kelcy Davenport. Artist and writer Roger Philip Dennis‘ poem “Corkscrew Hill Photo” took First Prize in the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition 2014, and Norton uses his recitation in the soundtrack, along with soundscapes by Farah Mulla and music by Dissimilar.
